welcome to the story.

I�ve been reading about the story of David. Not through the lens of facts or Old Testament theology or as some mythical figure who lived as someone detached or above reality. But as a boy, a man, a human, desperately frail, desperately real. A real story, in a real place and a real time in history. I believe this to be much more than a make believe story. I believe it to be a humble narrative of humanness with all its ups and downs and everything that is full of normalcy in between. Although, I believe this to be a true historical story, I am reading it for the first time through the lens of legend, fairy tale, saga, epic. Any of those will do. But they are primarily about something intangible that precise facts or theology can never bring to this story. They give me the eyes to see the story of David as my own. And even bigger than that, a story passed down through the generations to me. Verbal retellings at first. Perhaps around a campfire before a battle. And then later to written paper which mothers would eventually read to their child as bedtime story. It�s story. It�s narrative. It�s emphatically something more than type on a page or words sketched to notebook. It�s ordinary and epic. When I am old and gray and begin to teeter on the edge of my new life, I will not be remembered through the means of fact. But I will be remembered through story. As we all will. Our lives are neither facts nor theology. Our lives are story. Ordinary as they might be. Epic as they might be. The Bible has to be engaged with on that level. To approach it any other way strips it of beauty, of realness. The Bible does not so much offer us a moral code that says �live like this�; nor does it provide a theology that says, �think like this and life will make sense.� The biblical way is to tell a story and invite us, �live into this.� Enter. Engage. Hope. Wrestle. Inspire. Progress. Live. Dream. Create. The story begins with a woman. Hannah is her name. Elkanah is his. And then there is Samuel. In the time of the beginnings, before there were kings or queens in the land of Israel, Samuel served as the leader of this nation/tribe/culture of people. He was their priest and there was no king but God.