StoryTeller – Dancing In The Kingdom

Dancing in the Kingdom- Table of Contents

Dancing In the Kingdom – Part 1 – Shadows of the Kingdom – Chapter 1 – Prelude

Let the confusion begin.

[Bible references: Psalm 139; Jeremiah 29:11; Ephesians 2:10]

Many of us don’t want the story of our life to end where we currently are because we want our lives to be more than the mess we are or the mess we see. We have a sense that “this is not the way things should be,” something is not right either about ourselves or our bodies or our minds or our situation or the world around us. At some level we are discontented, dissatisfied, and restless.

A few thousand years ago, someone began writing a story, a different story than the others in circulation at the time. Those other stories were about gods who, except for being immortal, acted just like the humans with all their faults and shortcomings. And those stories headed nowhere. Nothing got better.[1]

But this new story was not about many gods but one God. This new story explained that even though there is a mess now, things had been originally good, and there is a plan to make things good once more. Intriguingly, although the story was begun by one human author, other authors would continue the story. These different authors spoke different languages and lived at various times over the course of 1500 years. What held the story of all these different authors all together was the Divine Author whose Spirit was breathed into each human author. What began as a set of writings by one human author, eventually became a book, a literary masterpiece with common themes, but using complex literary devices and different genres. These writings, all linked together with direct quotes or allusions creating webs of intertextual references, created one long, complex story of a God who has remained faithful despite our distracted and discontented ways.

These texts were sometimes about events before the writers lived, sometimes about events witnessed by the different writers or sometimes prophetic judgments about the immediate or far-off future.[2] These prophecies revealed God’s co-authorship when the events that were foretold made no sense at the time they were written, but became clear only later, either after later writers clarified those prophecies or after the prophecies were actually fulfilled.

[1] Ouro, Robert. “Similarities and Differences between the Old Testament and the Ancient Near Eastern Texts” Andrew University Seminary Studies, Vol 49, No. 1, 5-32 digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3125&context=auss

[2] Bible Project. “Ancient Jewish Meditation Literature” Bible Project bibleproject.com/explore/video/bible-jewish-meditation-literature-h2r/

Reflections

Think about the Life Map you made in the previous section. What questions emerge from your story?

Take time to share your story with others. As you listen to each other’s story, what themes do you see in each other’s lives?

Share the impressions you have of the Bible and of Christianity. What questions do you have? Do you see how your story fits into God’s story?

Observe

Read Psalm 139. Think about the comprehensiveness with which the Creator knew you even before He created you and even before time and how He is intimate with you during each moment of the day. What kind of confidence does that give you?

The Story-Teller and His Book

[Bible references: Genesis 1-50; Matthew 1-28 or Matthew 13:1-23]

Over the last two millennia, many scholars have delved deeply into the details of this complex story in their attempts to interpret this story, trying to figure out not just the story but its Creator. There is so much of the creation itself that we don’t understand that it “makes sense” that we would be unable to understand the one who created it. In all of this, in what seems to be a deliberate pattern, the Creator doesn’t try to explain Himself, as much as He just does things and then tells us who He is and what He does, things such as:

The creation of the world and His response to it.

The first people He created and the messes they made and how He responded.

The family he chose to give His laws to, the messes they made, and how He responded to them.

And then the seemingly impossible happened, God came to us himself, in human flesh, as Jesus, a man from Nazareth, a small town in the Galilee region of ancient Israel, speaking to us as one human to another. In condescending to us, much of his basic teaching was given in the form of little stories called parables through which even children as well as adults can intuitively grasp the very character of the Creator.

The complexity of the Biblical story opens up the possibility to many various ways to retell the story, allowing us to draw attention to the many different aspects of the story. The Bible itself starts out by laying out various themes at the beginning that are then retold in different ways throughout the Bible. Dancing in the Kingdom will continue that spirit, laying out that story in different ways. As you read through each iteration, look for what is unique in each instance. When you reach the end of Dancing in the Kingdom, take the time to retell the story in your own words and how you fit into it.

Reflections

If you have the time, skim through Genesis and/or Matthew. Notice that much of the Bible is narrative, stories about things that happened. Write down your impressions of this high-level skimming read of these books and of any questions you have then share them with others.

Observe

Read Genesis 1-3 and Matthew 1-3. Compare the first three chapters of Genesis with the first three chapters of Matthew. What do they show about how God works?