We've all experienced storytelling gone wrong: if it's a comedy, the punch line is delivered too late; if it's a story that's meant to be moving, the moral lesson comes across trite or cliche; or my personal favourite (mostly because I'm one of its worst offenders), the story where the narrator forgets the point about half way through, dumping the protagonist (and the audience) in the Land of Nowhere.
We all know the feeling of storytelling done right: the plot thickens rather than dissipates as the story goes on, the characters we thought were dead get brought back to life, and when the end comes we're wishing for a sequel so we can find out what happened next.
Good stories have the power to makes us feel as close to its characters as we do our own families. Good stories remind us that a world beyond what we see in front of us is possible (I'll be the first to admit that I approached the mailbox with unusual vigour following the first instalment of Harry Potter, and I still look twice at the column between platforms 9 and 10 whenever I'm at a rail station in England :P).
Lent is a time when we get to be both the storyteller and the reader; in our Lenten readings and worship, we get to participate in some small way in re-telling God's grand narrative. And in our Lenten disciplines, we get to fit our feet as close as humanly possible into the footsteps of Jesus and watch eagerly as the plot thickens.
Today Jesus told a man who was paralyzed to get up and walk. I wonder what will happen next . . .
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