My beautiful
wife Nicole and I have been married for 21 years and counting. Early on in our married life she began a
habit of asking, “tell me a story” at the end of our day. Aside from an occasional foray into fiction,
my go-to response was to tell her about how we had met, about our first kiss,
reminding her that she asked me to kiss her, and how we had subsequently fallen
in love.
Along with
these origin stories about how our union came to be, which she enjoyed even
though they lacked any radioactive spider bites or experiments with gamma
radiation, I recounted to her the tales of road trips we had taken together to
Texas, Virginia, Glacier National Park and Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain National
Park, and once more to Glacier National Park, and the various adventures, and
misadventures that accompanied them.
For example,
“Do you remember the time we pulled a pop-up camper to RMNP, only to discover while
we tried to set it up in the dark at the end of the first day that we’d left
two of the poles behind, necessitating making new ones from some pipe purchased
at a Lowe’s the next day, have the stove be unusable because the gas line was
clogged with a wasp nest, discover the hard way that misquotes had multiple
ways inside that we needed to plug, have a flat on the car in Colorado and on
the trailer in MN, and finally have the lift mechanism stuck in the up position
while I beat on it with a rubber hammer at Tahquamenon Falls State Park in MI’s
U.P.? Ah, fun times.” FYI, that was the only trip we took with that
trailer, sold it the next summer.
For
Christmas 2007, I created a journal of memories to give to Nicole that covered
our relationship from 1999 when we first met until then. It was a leather-bound journal with the
written version of the stories from my point of view that I had been telling
her at night, in my dubious handwriting, but also with stickers representing
the various events in our lives together and places we had visited in it that I
had purchased at a craft store to give it some flare.
In 2014,
when Nicole and I returned to Glacier National Park, hiking to some of the same
places as we had in 2004 like Avalanche Lake, but adding a 13.6-mile round trip
trail with 3,526 feet of elevation gain to Sperry Chalet, the last mile or so
on top of the still six or seven feet deep snow that remained in mid-June. It was a climb that seemed endless to Nicole,
especially since you can’t see the goal to know if you’re getting close or not until
you’re almost to it. After that trip,
Nicole took it upon herself to one-up my effort of commemoration by making this
professional looking book on the computer and printing it on Shutterfly.
The thing
is, we both knew the stories that we were telling each other, or writing
about, already. It wasn’t new
information the first time we told it to each other, let alone on subsequent retellings,
so why did Nicole want me to share with her those same memories over and over
again?
The reason
has to do with the value we place on the stories we choose to tell about
the past. There was a reason why she
didn’t ask me to, and I didn’t choose to, recount boring everyday stories,
things from work, traumas, or sorrows, but rather focused upon those seminal
moments, those vivid, comic, and happy memories that we shared together. Our shared stories are instrumental in
explaining how we became who we are now, the experiences themselves having molded
and shaped us along the way.
It turns
out, God does much the same thing by choosing to share, and reshare, specific
stories about the past in the scriptures.
One moment in time stands out as the example par excellence: The
Exodus.
The first
time God tells Moses that The Exodus is going to be a recurring theme occurs
during the instructions about the Passover,
Exodus
12:14 New International Version
“This is
a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate
it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance.
Even before
it had happened, God told Moses that his people would be required to commemorate
this display of God’s power and covenantal faithfulness with a yearly ceremony
in perpetuity.
It was much
less than one year before the story of The Exodus was brought back up, even
before the Israelites arrived at Mt. Sinai, God needed to remind them of the
plagues that had befallen Egypt, this first time using the story to put a stop
to their grumbling along the way.
In fact,
Moses used the story of The Exodus when talking to God, who certainly
hadn’t forgotten about it, in his plea for mercy upon the Israelites following
the Golden Calf debacle.
Exodus
32:11-12 New International Version
11 But
Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your
anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power
and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent
that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off
the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring
disaster on your people.
Thus begins
a pattern repeated many, many times in the remaining books of the Hebrew
Scriptures as well as in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, of God,
the psalmists, the prophets, Jesus, the Apostles, and more making direct
references and easily identifiable allusions to God’s actions in The
Exodus.
The Exodus in
subsequent portions of scripture becomes a catch-all capable of both
admonishing the people when they go astray from the covenant and encouraging
the people during times of oppression.
While pointing to the past, references to The Exodus also become the
basis for promises about what God will do for his people in the future, with
the ultimate culmination being the Messianic fulfillment of Jesus whose life
and ministry is steeped in Exodus imagery highlighted by a Passover meal at the
beginning of his Passion.
The past,
for God, is a tool capable of teaching his people what he needs them to know in
a variety of settings and circumstances.
It is not meant to be forgotten, but remembered and learned from not
once, but multiple times.
What then do
we do with what God has done in our lives, individually, our families, as
a local congregation, and as a region of the American Baptist Churches? Commemoration and celebration are certainly
in order, as is storytelling and preservation of that history that allows it to
be shared now and in the future.
Following
the biblical examples of how The Exodus is used, perhaps the most important
things we can do with our knowledge of what God has done for us and through us
in the past, is use it to help us confront, and by God’s grace overcome, the
challenges of the present. Have we
strayed? Remembering how God forgave our
past can guide us to repentance again.
Are we burdened? Recalling how
God provided in our past can comfort us and give us hope. Do we need motivation? Praising God for the
outpouring of his amazing grace in living memory can help us find it.
What stories do you need
to tell of the love of God manifested in your church and your family?
The stories
I can choose to tell to Nicole in the present have a new character in them since
she made “Nicole and Randy’s Big Adventure” in 2014: our precious Clara
Marie. And while we were already aware
of God’s presence in the first 14 years of our journey as husband and wife,
especially the difficult years that led step by step to our decision to move to
PA in 2012, and while we have already given him glory for seeing us through
those days, parenthood is often God’s way of saying, “you ain’t seen nothing
yet.” We have so many stories to tell of
God’s love and faithfulness.
