Living in The Story

Photo of The Story from ViewTheStory.com

We are living in the greatest story ever told, God’s story of love and His plan for redemption.

This grand narrative is larger than us, but it includes us nonetheless.  The story is not about us, however, it is about the love of God in His son Jesus.  This story involves four main parts: God’s creation, the fall of humanity, Jesus’ redemption, or rescue, of humanity, and God’s restoration of all things. 

While the Bible is composed of 66 individual books, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament, the Bible is a single narrative, a unified story.  There is a “big picture” in the scriptures.  We tend to only see the Old and New Testaments and individual books, but the Bible is a “Whole Testament.”  Scripture is a meta-narrative.  N.T. Wright calls this “The whole sweep of scripture.”

In looking at this overarching survey of the scriptures, there is a great new resource called The Story, which is a simple and straightforward website and booklet that outlines the whole Biblical narrative.  You can read the story by clicking this link here.

The following is an excerpt about The Story:

“If the Gospel is the true story of God’s redemptive plan (and it is!), then we in the Church must become master storytellers heralding this Good News both near and far. So in the chapters of this guide, you will find a summary of the four key points of the Bible’s grand narrative: Creation, Fall, Rescue, and Restoration. For these reasons, this resource is not only helpful in evangelism, but also provides a fantastic tool to help in making disciples whose lives are built upon the Bible that stands as its basis (from the Foreword to The Story, by George G. Robinson).”

We are living in this great story because of the Great Storyteller God.  As G.K. Chesterton wrote, “I had always felt life first as a story and if there is a story there is a storyteller.”  We have a greater understanding of the Storyteller by looking at the story we are in through the scriptures.  And the closer we get to the Storyteller, the clearer the His story becomes. 

The Story is an exciting resource, which aids us in studying the storyteller and His great story. You can learn more about the story by visiting The Story’s website here.