Narrative is the overarching story someone is telling. It's the reason we can join in a familiar movie midway through and still know what's going on. We know where we are in the narrative.
For our purposes, though, we turn our storied eyes toward the Bible. Though it is a library of books written by many people over many centuries, it is still a cohesive narrative from beginning to end. However, the challenge for us modern Westerners is to recognize it as an ancient Eastern narrative, where, instead of moving in a direct path from beginning to end, the Bible moves forward, but in a spiral formation. All along the way, we get vignettes and images that refer to the beginning, point to the end, and cycle back to the middle.
This is purposeful. It is written in this way to draw us into the story God is telling. We are meant to find ourselves in the midst of its pages, to recognize that God continues to write the narrative with us in mind. All of our current circumstance, choices, and decisions can be understood and located in the narrative God is and has been telling.
In this way, we have inherited a narrative that has been passed down to us. Likewise, we are entrusted to pass that story of faith on to others. Before we can, though, we first have to know the story we're in. And then we have to know how to tell that story.
If you had to share the story of the Bible from beginning to end in 10 minutes, how would you tell it? Where do you currently find yourself in the midst of God's story?
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