Fifteen Second Stories and What Difference Does God Make?
On Sunday, Pastor Matthew preached on Jesus’ baptism, inviting us to reflect on both repentance (admitting we are powerless) and on witnessing (the responsibility to not just see but to tell the story of what is seen). He led us through four movement breaks each lasting fifteen seconds. Toward the end of the sermon, he challenged us to think this week about what story we could tell in fifteen seconds of the power of God’s freedom at work. He challenged us to remember a story of good news experienced amidst powerlessness, remembering in a country and time determined to forget.
Yesterday was the first full day of school my children had had since December 20th. Readers, the restraint collapse that happened when they were all back home in the afternoon was epic, messy, and full of weeping and gnashing of teeth. There were shirts pulled and feelings hurt, names called and shame hefted, all of it exacerbated by the fact that I was shocked instead of soft when it all went down. I did more to escalate than I did to regulate. It was not our finest family hour. We eventually found our breaths and hugged it out and settled into various nooks of house, but Elisa stayed with me a while on the couch.
We had to wade through some of the muck of shame I had used to try and change the way she talked to her brothers. Spoiler alert- it had not motivated her to want to change. When I was calm, I was able to speak over her words of her goodness, her belovedness, her common and shared need for God’s help in being what we were made to be. Through big tears, she asked me why in the world did God even allow us to make bad choices. She laid out the problem of free will with such breathtaking simplicity that I found it hard to respond.
Why, she asked, didn’t God still allow us choice but instead of good, bad, and risky, just good, less good, risky— no bad. She said, God could have chosen to avoid so much pain. I admitted to her then and to you now that I don’t know how to explain it. That it has perplexed and grieved many wise people.
When I said that regardless of why evil exists, Jesus came to be near to us in the pain and that the Holy Spirit gives us power to do what we can’t do on our own, she looked at me in despair and said, we’ve had all of that and it doesn’t. make. any. difference.
I’m still sifting through my own feelings at watching her wrestle so viscerally with the shortcomings of people, of the church, and of her own desires to do what’s right. I felt powerless in the paucity of my own explanations. I would 1,000,000 times rather watch a silly art video with her on YouTube or teach her how to crochet or paint. Most of us avoid these questions ourselves except for “at midnights” like Taylor tells us.
So, I reached for Gregory Boyd and for fifteen second stories. I told her that in his book about doubt, Boyd said that he still chooses to follow Jesus because of three things: history, ethics, and mystery. Somehow, encountering Jesus made a whole group of people change their religion and lives even when they were being thrown to lions. Christians historically helped found orphanages and hospitals, and there are stories of enemies somehow forgiving (we did talk about how Christians also did terrible things historically but that’s another conversation). In terms of mystery, there are just stories of God’s presence and power that can’t be explained. Our oldest, she has heard firsthand some of the ways God showed up in my painful mental health seasons with images or people who gave me hope. She’s heard the story of my swallow tattoo and seen folks from church bring us food when we were hurting.
I also told the fifteen second story of how my sister and I have markedly different lives than our dad, especially in regards to alcohol addiction and family dysfunction (many of his nieces and nephews are estranged from his sisters or living very difficult realities). I told her that Jesus healing the inherited parts of us that were hurt by generations of bad things that happened in his country and his family is actually miraculous. That she and her brothers don’t experience the pain of addiction when statistically, they could have, is a sign that knowing God and belonging to the family of God does in fact make a difference. Breaking cycles of pain is one of the most potent witnesses in my own doubt.
I don’t want to reach to soothe away my children’s doubt and grief about the state of the world and our hearts too quickly. I don’t want to bypass the questions. But, yesterday, because of the challenge to have a fifteen second story ready to witness, I had something I could hand my hurting kiddo about how God does slowly change the world.
On my bulletin board, I have an old article from Pathways magazine from summer 2018 about evangelism, written by some of my mentors Skip and Carol Tobin. During a church training event, they shared two tools that I think go so well with Pastor Matthew’s challenge for embodied witnessing this week.
The first is the LASI approach to evangelism. When sharing the good news with another, they suggest we need to Listen Well, Affirm what we hold in common with one another, Share what is true in our experience and Invite God into the conversation “asking him to do what we can’t do in making himself known.”
They elaborated on the “share our experience” section by giving a three step format to speak or write, practice, and have ready for when it is needed. Here it is for you:
“1. Identify a legitimate human need that was or is predominant in our life and which serves to motivate us (examples: love and belonging, approval, meaning, beauty, etc…”
2. Share about the despair, the sin and shame that occurred/occurs when we try and pursue that need apart from God.
3. Describe how God rescued or continues to rescue us, offering us what we need in the context of a relationship with God. “ (Pathways, 9, Summer 2018, Tobin).
May these two tools help us have slips of stories ready in mind and pockets. May we continue to bear witness (in fifteen seconds or over many minutes or years) so that our children can know what difference God makes in the midst of painful realities within and without of ourselves.
