Keep telling your stories!

Pat and I were eating dinner with a group of friends recently when I noticed a couple at a nearby table. Neither spoke to the other. The female member of the duo sat and texted endlessly. Similarly, as Pat and I travel, we curiously note the video screens in land yachts passing by. Children aren’t speaking to parents any more than the couple we saw at dinner. In other settings in which we have found ourselves, multiple engines of technology are sending and receiving information, opinions, and foolishness digitally.

The account of power plays between Moses representing the Lord and Pharaoh protecting self interest is like a Wimbledon tennis match. God served an ultimatum, Pharaoh volleyed, Moses returned the Lord’s response. Game, set, match, and the Lord’s people carried Egyptian trophies to the Promised Land. The Lord speaks loudly in Exodus 10:1,2, "Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the LORD.’" Keep telling the stories! Israel’s faith, and ours, is kept alive by telling stories! Good preachers tell good stories. Successful parents tell stories which children never forget.



The story telling stage must be set as intentionally, but not as elaborately, as a Broadway production. Passing on the story is deliberate, not accidental! Moses spoke into the future of all legitimate faith:
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates." – Deuteronomy 6:4-9
The message? "Be intentional! Be consistent! Be passionate about the Message of Faith! Build it with care."