The Big Story of the Bible

Stories are important. Whether it’s fiction or true, a good story can reach into our souls and speak truth in a way that we wouldn’t hear otherwise. I think that’s why certain children’s stories are classics – The Velveteen Rabbit, The Giving Tree, Charlotte’s Web, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe are just a few. 

Jesus also knew the power of stories as he taught mostly in parables – a form of storytelling that taught deeper truths about the Kingdom of God. The meaning of his stories was, at times, elusive, and required his listeners (and us) to dig deeper, ponder, and search for more understanding. A good story does that to us. We don’t walk away forgetting it but thinking about it more.

The story of the Bible is like this. It’s woven throughout all 66 books, from Genesis to Revelation. When we take a step back and realize this, it really is quite amazing! God has been telling us a story since the beginning of time – a story that involves us. That’s certainly a story I want to dig into.

I wrote about biblical literacy back in post #29 and how it’s important for us as parents to help our children become biblically literate. It’s not so our children can say a bunch of memory verses or know the books of the Bible in order. It’s not so others can see how well we taught our children. It’s not even to please God. The reason it’s important is that knowing the story of God is knowing our own story from his perspective. It’s so we can live out this relationship we have with God authentically, growing to love him more and learning how to love others as well.

The story of the Bible answers the big questions of life – why am I here? What purpose do I have? What is my identity? Who is God? What is my relationship to God? What does God think about me? Why is there evil in the world and why do things keep going wrong? Why is there suffering? Is there any hope? What can I hope for? These are just a few of the questions your child will, at some point in their life, be asking. I don’t know about you, but I find these questions difficult and sometimes unsettling. I don’t often have a neat and tidy answer for them. 

God, in his wisdom, has given us his story to help us understand these things and more (or at least know where we can go with our questions). In God’s story we encounter people who, like us, mess up and fail. They have great faith one moment and fall into doubts and sin the next moment. They wrestle with God (literally), have arguments with God, plead with God. They experience suffering, hardship, and pain. They also have face-to-face encounters with God, hear God speak to them, and have dreams about amazing things. We read about miracles that happen as well as miracles that don’t happen. It’s about real life encounters with God in everyday moments.

Woven through these stories is the story of God revealing himself to humanity – his creation. He chooses to be with us, have a relationship with us, forgive us, help us, discipline us, love us, and even die for us. He does life with us so that we can do life with him. That is the reason he gave us this wonderful story.

So how do we get to know this story? Well, it goes back to us reading the story (the Bible), reflecting on it, and talking about it. Depending on the age of your child, it’s always best to use age-appropriate children’s Bible versions

There are many resources available to us. You can check out some ideas from Blog #29 and a few more linked on this page.

Sarah has been Pastor of Children & Families at The Journey Church for eight years. Her passion is to see families growing in their faith with Jesus together and living it out in their homes, neighborhoods, and schools, as well as being deeply connected with their church family. To find out more about The Journey Church ministries explore this website. To contact Sarah you can email her at sarah@onthejourney.ca.