Grains of Sand

Google Images From somewhere in the dark reaches of my mind, I remember a book titled: “Storytelling Made Easy.” The ‘how to” of storytelling was part of our teacher training. Recently I have been more than impressed by the efforts of my friends in Pakistan to teach the Word through what they call, “storying.” Many cultures are built around people telling their stories as a means of passing down their heritage and knowledge from one generation to another. So it made perfectly good sense for our missionaries to tell God’s “story," one story at a time, in a way that was familiar to the Pakistanis. We tell our children bedtime stories. Storytelling is something we all do, whether we formalize it by giving it such an exalted title or not. Mark 4:33, 34 comes just after Jesus has told a series of stories to illustrate the nature of the kingdom of God. Mark makes this statement: “ With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not s...

We were introduced yesterday to Lamech who, like his great, great grandfather, Cain, was an unrepentant murderer. Cain’s heritage to his children and their children was likely a twisted version of his own history that led his descendants to believe that their evil actions could be justified. Genesis 5 introduces us to another Lamech. This one was a descendant of Seth, the son God gave to Adam and Eve after the death of Abel and the exile of Cain. Lamech’s father was a godly man. It was said of Enoch that he “ …walked with God, then he was no more, because God took him away. ” (Genesis 5:24, NIV). It appears that Enoch passed on some of that heritage to his son. Lamech became the father of Noah. Names meant something in the ancient past, denoting expectations and describing characteristics of a particular child. Noah’s name sounds like the Hebrew word for “ comfort ” and his father, Lamech, pronounced these prophetic words on this son: “ He will comfort us in the la...