The Power of God, Poured Out through Stories

I still don’t know what exactly compelled me. Maybe it was my best friend bragging that her Sunday school teacher was none-other than our small town’s homecoming queen. In a small town, that’s a celebrity. A year had passed since then, but I cannot remember any other reasons. I only remember asking my mother if I could go to church one third-grade weekend. 

My mom’s face lit up. She set down the ingredients to that night’s meal and picked up the yellow receiver of the rotary phone hanging our kitchen wall. I waited as her fingers moved around the dial exactly five times and the whirr connected our line. “Hello Dee-Ette, I have a favor to ask you…. So you’ll pick Michelle up tomorrow morning? Thank you.” She set the receiver back down and returned to the mess of ingredients. “The Hobden’s are picking you up in the morning and you will go with them.” 

No big deal. In small towns, you get used to the village mindset. So-and-so takes care of so-and-so’s kids, because next week they will need a similar favor. It didn’t even occur to me that maybe my mother should have taken me herself—my independent streak didn’t manifest by chance, and fear wasn’t on my mind as I walked into the Sunday School room the next morning. 

A large lady, the Sunday School teacher, hugged me and sat me next to the other girls. She pulled out the felt-board and put up images of a man in robes. “This is Moses. As Moses walked through the desert one day, he came across a bush.” She plopped a bush on the felt board. Like magic. The bush was on fire. Also magic. “As you can see, the bush was burning, with flames, but it didn’t burn away. It stayed perfectly fine, while the flames surrounded it.” Ok, seriously magic. “And then the voice of God spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Take off your sandals, for this is holy ground!’” My eight-year-old mind somehow knew that it wasn’t magic, but it was God.

And that is how my faith all started. To be honest, the bible stories were a little like an obsession. I couldn’t stop going back to church for more, and the children’s bus (used to be a thing) would pick me up every week for the feeding. As I grew, I found the stories in my own bible and kept digging digging digging into them. When I could no longer find new narratives, I moved to the epistles… which frankly weren’t as exciting, but the stories had primed me for them. 

My love of bible stories quickly branched out into Christian fiction, and I may have read every novel in our small church library. I read about characters who had their own faith to work through, their own perceptions to overcome. I learned a ton of theology from George MacDonald. But there was never enough! I wanted more!

I’m sure many of you can relate to my testimony. This is what drives me to write. One friend read my novel, incomplete as it is, and she called me, filled with emotion. “I need more of the Lord. I need more of what you put in this book.” 

I know, dear friend. Me too. 

I love this writer’s group, because life is in their pens. We have a vision to light this world by drawing our readers into the light and the glory God has deposited in us. I am proof that it works, that God can draw young people deeper through the thoughts and imaginations of his servants. 

So keep on writing, you warriors of truth! And pray for us, that we would work diligently to write well and get this truth to young minds.