Story Telling

Jesus was a fellow that liked to tell stories in fact you could always count on him for a story. He was also a keen observer on things going on around him and when he noticed something in particular he would begin to tell a story.

In Luke 14:7-11 Jesus was at a feast put on by a “Ruler of the Pharisees” that’s Jew talk for a really big dog in the Jewish religion. Jesus noticed that the guests were competing with each other for the best seats and of course started in with a story. Here’s how it goes… there’s a big party and one of the guests decides to sit up by the host but then another guest came in, perhaps the mayor of the city, and the host tells the guy sitting next to him… “do you mind sitting at the end of the table I had intended for the mayor to sit here.” Jesus concludes that the embarrassment is intense and it would be better when you came to the party to kind of hang back and let the host sit you in a better place if he chose to.

And then he concludes, “For everyone that exalts himself shall be humbled; and he that humbles himself shall be exalted.”

Keep in mind that Jesus tells this story in the middle of the party to guests who had been involved in inappropriate behavior. It does kind of kill the mood at a party.

I like it that Jesus was a story teller because I like to tell stories too but I guess one of the differences between me and Jesus is I usually like to tell stories to entertain people and make them laugh. I’ve never seen Jesus tell a story just to entertain people.

It’s not wrong to bring joy into people’s lives… in fact it’s a good thing but let’s also be attentive to what’s going on around us and instead of taking the short cut of condemning behavior, illustrate it with a story that will stick in the mind of the listener.

That’s reminds me of a story.

No Joke

There’s an old joke about a farmer who was going broke farming so he quit and started selling hammers. He would buy hammers for $3 apiece and sell them for $2 each. He was happy and doing a pretty good business but a friend advised him that for every hammer he sold he was losing $1. His reply? “it’s more profitable than farming”.

That joke is similar to what people sometimes do with their lives. Activities like drunkenness, sexual immorality, unfaithfulness to a spouse, etc. can cause folks to view their lives as being spiritually bankrupt. So they decide to go to church or pray or read the Bible every once in a while without actually correcting the behaviors that got them into such a big mess to begin with.

Going to church, praying and reading the Bible are good things to do but until we take some corrective action in our lives and commit ourselves fully to Jesus Christ and his teachings, we are still “going broke”… Like buying hammers for $3 and selling them for $2. Don’t make a joke out of your lives.

http://parkwaychurchnews.blogspot.com/2013/05/no-joke.html