Telling, acting, eating, living the story

by Doug Floyd
October 6, 2010

Last week I enjoyed the opportunity to speak to a group in the healthcare field about navigating
through crisis and change. It’s a bit ironic. I was speaking because the original speaker had a
crisis and was unable to attend. In the midst of change, I spoke about change.

Some changes in life are so dramatic, so catastrophic that we never go back. Or as Bob Dylan
says, “You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.” We cannot return to the
way things were. Life changes unalterably. A person goes blind. Another person receives the gift
of sight. Both lives change in unexpected ways.

Dramatic changes can mark the beginning of grief and bitterness and despair, but they also mark
the beginning of a new way of life filled with surprise and wonder. Our health may change, our
job may change, our relationships may change, our world may change.

As we process change, we tell a story about that change. It might be good or bad or funny or
tearful, but we begin to tell a story. As I spoke to the audience last week, I invited them to tell
their story. In fact, I suggested they tell their life story in 30 seconds. The 30 second boundary
forces some details to the top and others vanish. It may help us focus on what story we are
hearing in our head.

They told their stories, then I told Israel’s story.

After leaving Egypt, Israel recounted how YHWH dramatically rescued them from slavery and
formed them into a people at Mt Sinai. They told the story to their children. They acted the story
in worship. They ate the story in Passover. Whether rising, walking, sitting or sleeping, they
rehearsed the story of God’s faithful rescue over and over. This story was and is good news, also
known as Gospel.

By rehearsing the story, they fixed their heart and minds and bodies upon the action of the Lord.
By rehearsing the Gospel story, they learned to trust in the God they could not see and could not
shape into forms.

But there came a day when they forgot to rehearse the story. They quit acting the story. They quit
eating the story. They started listening to other stories of other gods. They forgot the faithfulness
of the Lord. They forgot the commands of the Lord. They forgot the goodness of the Lord.

I know what it’s like to forget the story of God’s goodness. There have been times when I
thought, dreamed and told the wrong story. In my story, I questioned God’s goodness, his
faithfulness and his love for me. Once we tell the wrong story, we might get stuck in it.

In 2008, our church building burned and I lost my job. These two events impacted me in a
deeper, harder way than over 20 years of battling with kidney disease. A dark cloud engulfed me.

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I started telling myself a story of failure and forsakenness. In the first story, I began recounting
the past 20 years and questioned every decision I ever made. In the second story, I questioned
God’s faithfulness.

Both stories battled in my imagination. Some days I’d think every decision I ever made was a
bad one. Other days, I wonder why God chose to make me fail in everything I touched. I cried
out to God, “Look at all I sacrificed for you! Why won’t you help me?”

The stories stole my joy. My gifted wife saw these false stories as a deathlike grip that was
consuming me. In the midst of these discouraging tales, I had to hear again the Gospel story, or
the good news God’s faithfulness.

Israel had to hear the Gospel story. Her existence depended on it. After generations of forgetting
the stories of YHWH’s lovingkindness, Israel had become apostate. God in his goodness
preserved them and honored the obedience of a few righteous kings, but eventually He gave
them over to their false stories.

Babylon led the broken people into captivity. Babylon burned down the Temple. Babylon
destroyed the land.

The people wept. Their songs and their stories failed them. So they hung up the harp and quit
singing altogether. Now they lived in an alien land with alien gods. Abandoned by the God of
their fathers. Lost in the darkness. They needed to hear the Gospel story.

Into this dark story of exile, appears a strange man who sees a strange light. Ezekiel encounters
the glory of the Lord. The glory that once resided in the Holy of Holies appears to him on the
shore of the Chebar canal while he stands among the exiles. To Ezekiel’s surprise, YHWH did
not abandon his people as they stood by dark waters. He came in the midst of wind and storm
and fire; in the midst of the four living creatures; in the midst of the sound of many water.
YHWH came in glory.

And He gave Ezekiel a new story, a Gospel story. As Ezekiel talked, ate, sang and acted out the
Word of the Lord, he exposed Israel’s sickly condition. He revealed the death that infected their
worship, their imagination, their stories. He began to tell a story about a valley of dry bones.
7
I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a
rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8 And I looked, and behold, there were
sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no
breath in them. 9Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to
the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these
slain, that they may live.” 10So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them,
and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.
11
Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say,
‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy, and
say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your
graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am

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the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. 14 And I will
put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you
shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.” (Ez 37)

In the former story Israel had been enslaved in Egypt and YHWH rescued them from the power
of Pharaoh. In this new story, Israel is dead. YHWH raises them from the dead and restores them
to be His people “inspired” by His Spirit. As Ezekiel proclaimed this Gospel story, the people
come back to life.

Like Israel, we need to hear again the Gospel that’s too good to be true: Jesus Christ living,
dying, rising again and interceding for us at the right hand of the Father. In this story, we hear our
story. We’re not forsaken. Death doesn’t have the final word. Our ministries may die. Our
friendships may die. Our dreams may die. Our bodies may die. But death is not the final word.

We may faces changes in life that feel like death in our bones. We may lose our strength. We may
lose things we thought we could never lose. In these times of crisis and dramatic change, we may
question the goodness of God. We may question the faithfulness of God. We may damn ourselves
in a hell of failure and regret.

The good news of Gospel bursts into this darkness with the light of hope. In Jesus Christ, we
encounter the goodness of God who loves us even when we are enemies. In Jesus Christ, we
encounter the faithfulness of God that cannot be stopped even by death. Nothing can separate us
from the love of God in Christ.

We must hear Gospel. We must sing Gospel. We must act out Gospel. We must eat Gospel. When
we rise, sit, sleep or walk, we rehearse the goodness of God. By His grace, our imaginations
come back to life. Even in the midst of the suffering and uncertainty, we learn to sing the new
songs of Zion. We rediscover our story in the story of Jesus Christ. Our lives matter. We are
created for glory. And He will complete the work He has begun in us.

I encourage you to listen to the Gospel story. Listen again to your story of death and life in
Christ.

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