Our Markers: Story
August 15th, 2013 | John Chandler
In one of our first Cultivate core group gatherings, we talked through our Markers together. These are shared understandings that form our life together and guide what we do. Over the next few Thursdays, we’ll revisit each of these markers here on the blog.
The first of these markers is Story, and our description of it reads like this:
At the heart of our faith is a story. It is the story of how God’s kingdom has unfolded through history. But each of us has a story as well. Just as we look to see how God has been at work through history, we also reflect on how God has been at work in our life. Faith happens when we see the intersection of God’s story with our own. Our community longs to join God in the writing of how this story will continue to unfold.
We see story as the grand narrative of God. We treasure Scripture, and the traditions of both Judaism and Christianity, as a means to see and recognize God’s ongoing working in our world. We peer into Scripture to see how God is ever entering into broken spaces, not give up on his creation project, but calling and inviting humanity into the work of making it right again. We see the work of Jesus, God in flesh, demonstrating and enacting God’s project to set it all right again. We see God’s story as a collection of re-’s: redemption, repair, renewal.
As we see God at work in the larger story of creation and humanity, we also look for God in our own story, as a community and as individuals. We look at the events of our life, both the beautiful and the ugly, to see how God was at work. We look back with both confidence and doubt, clearly seeing how God moved at times, and trusting that God was present at the times when we’re not so sure.
We treasure Scripture and our own stories alongside it. In our gathered times as a community, we reflect on Scripture together and we share our stories together. And out of this, we bring an expectation to see how a good God has been present in all of it.