Lately, the concept of storytelling has been on my mind. I recognized recently that my teaching style is storytelling and so is my writing style. When I look at educational data, I look for the story it tells. When I’m getting to know someone, I listen closely to their backstory because our stories define so many things about us.

There’s so much power in a good story. It’s how we connect with other people, through our stories. It’s why certain books and movies are deemed “classics” or “culturally significant”. It’s why we go back to them again and again even though we know what’s going to happen in the end.

When I was an English teacher, I loved seeing which tales and characters and conflicts resonated with my students, and I enjoyed hearing their explanations for why certain stories resonated, or why they didn’t. My last few years as a classroom teacher, I made it a goal to find a written work (poem, short story, novel, article, I didn’t care which) that ALL of my students could relate to, that resonated with EACH one of them in a powerful and meaningful way. I dug deep into classical and modern literature and nonfiction; I grabbed authors I’d never heard of and texts I’d never taught before, but I never did find a work that spoke to all of my students, a story that all of them were compelled to follow through to the end.

One day it occurred to me that this was a teaching goal I would never achieve.

But now, seven years removed from that teaching goal, I truly believe that there is one work, one beautifully, magnificently, perfectly composed story that speaks to the heart and experience of EACH and EVERY person:

The Bible.

God’s story.

Because all of history is HIS STORY.

Divinely inspired, the Bible is the perfect composition of relatable people and everyday conflicts that walk us from the beginning of time through to the end of time as we know it on earth and on into eternity. All of history, the story of every person who’s ever lived, is too large for any of us to read in a lifetime, so God, the perfect author, inspired the inclusion of only those stories that lead us directly to His love, through the greatest story of all time, the creation of a people to love Him and the redemption and eternal salvation of those people through His great love for them.

As a teacher of the Bible, I see the reaction that different people have to different parts of the Bible. I hear specific Bible figures come up frequently in conversation with certain people, like they gravitate toward those individuals. You’ve likely noticed that many of my personal references land with Moses and Gideon, two guys who felt seriously underqualified to step into God’s assignment for them and doubted and delayed from time to time. I also return quite often to Paul’s letters to the churches because Paul is so real about sharing his struggle between his flesh and his faith, and I wholeheartedly believe in being real. There is no poker face on this gal, and I’m thankful for Holy Spirit’s hand over my mouth because I have very little filter on my own. Transparent people are my people.

I’m betting you have stories from the Bible that resonate with you too, that you go back to again and again, that feature people whose lives feel like your life, like they’d understand where or who you’ve been or where or who you’d like to be in the present or the future.

And I’m betting that some of your go-to Bible people or stories aren’t the same as mine, but the fact remains that there is something for EACH person in God’s perfect story.

More importantly, there is something for ALL people in His redemption story. From Genesis to Revelation, God has unfolded His perfect plan to bring us into eternal harmony with Him.

And He wrote that perfect plan not as a 5 step manual for living or a complex diagram to follow but as a story because storytelling is engrained in who we are; whether written or spoken or acted out, we all love a good story, and friend, there is no story better story than His story. I have a theory for why we love stories too: I believe that God loves storytelling.

Why else would He have given us the path to redemption in story form? Why else did He encourage the saints of old to tell the stories of His faithfulness to future generations? Why else did Jesus teach through parables?

And most of all, why else does God want to be a part of our stories? Why else does He include us in His redemption story?

Because dear heart, He most certainly does want to be a part of your story, and He absolutely wants you to take part in His redemption story.

It’s all there in the Bible. Some people may see it as just history, but I know it’s His perfect Story, and I praise God for the gift of storytelling and the power it has on our lives, the power of life and death!