Pastor's Corner: Preserving my story
On Father’s Day of 2022, my kids sent me a subscription to StoryWorth.com.
Each week for a year, Storyworth would send me an email with a question I would have to answer. I would write out my answer to the question. Questions like: What was your neighborhood like growing up? What were you parents like? What was your favorite trip? What advice would you give your great-grandchild? I could use the questions they provided or make up my own.
At the end of the year, they would take all of the stories created by answering the questions and publish a very nice hardcover book. I also added many photos to the writings to enhance the book.
The Storyworth concept is to motivate people to preserve the memories and stories of a person’s life and pass them along to the next generations. What a great idea, and it was simple! I loved the time remembering things in my life that I thought might be important for future generations to read. I wished I had this for my parents.
While writing the book, I kept thinking about how Jesus told stories to the people of Israel that imparted eternal truths and principles. Jesus told parables (short stories) to the people like the Parable of the Lost Sheep, or The Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan. Such rich beautiful timeless stories preserved for eternity that have changed the lives of this wayward son (me) and millions for the last 2,000 years plus. I am so thankful, and the world is thankful, that the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the other authors of the Bible had the insight and the inspiration of God to write them down for all of us to read. We now have the most influential and popular book of all time. From the Guinness Book of World Records: “The best-selling book of all time is the Christian Bible. It is impossible to know exactly how many copies have been printed in the roughly 1,500 years since its contents were standardized, but research conducted by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 2021 suggests that the total number probably lies between 5 and 7 billion copies.”
You are officially challenged to write out your own story for future generations to read, but more importantly, get a copy of “His” Story, The Bible, The Word of God for yourself and read it afresh and see how your life will change.
Rev. Daniel Whiting is the retired executive pastor of Clarkston Community Church (Church of God Anderson).
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Pastor's Corner: Preserving my story
