What’s the best story you’ve heard or read recently?  What did you learn about the world, the storyteller, or yourself as you processed what you encountered?

Read Luke 1:1-4.  Then, read Acts 1:1-5.

Just as the author of these two volumes had a specific story to share and a specific audience in mind for his writings, he also has a very specific purpose in mind for this work.  “So that you might know the truth” about all that you have heard (Lk 1:4).

I often preach and teach about the capacity of story to assist in the sense-making work we all do.  As we enter the final days of this Christmas season, I’m wondering about the charge we sing of in the great spiritual “Go Tell It on the Mountain.”  The story of the child that was born 2000 years ago needs to be told again and again and again.  How have you been telling this story this year?

This week, our story moves far beyond angels, mangers and shepherds.  Luke’s story omits any mention of wise visitors and their gifts, hasty escapes or threatened empires but includes a similar recognition of God’s promises embodied with the infant Jesus.  Yesterday, the singular story of Jesus as a tweenager, has continued to reveal God’s truth.  And now the story goes on. 

My hope for the coming season is that you begin to find yourself woven into this story as well.  As we learn again of Jesus ministry, teaching, healing, reaching out, and crossing boundaries, hopefully you’ll find ever places to be drawn in.  God’s vision for the world, for you and me, becomes its clearest as more and more of Jesus’ story is revealed to us.  And this revelation includes deeper invitations for us as well.

This is why for the coming weeks we’ll be saying, “let’s roll up our sleeves together.”  One way to experience God’s story, making it real for us, is to listen for the echoes ringing out today and looking for all the opportunities created for us to act in response.  Retelling God’s story while embodied in our own lives, is exactly the mountain pulpit worthy of this message.

May peace find you this day. – Pastor Peter