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This is the introduction to
Bible Wonderings. Click on
the book cover, and you can
read one of the stories.
Bible Wonderings. Click on
the book cover, and you can
read one of the stories.
Introduction
“Tell me the old, old, story…”
“Tell me the stories of Jesus…”
“I love to tell the story…”
“We are a people of a story…”
Funny, I can’t think off-hand of a single hymn that begins
“Let’s reminisce about the laws of Leviticus…” or “Sing to
me once again the census figures of Nehemiah…”
That’s not an accident. I think, when all is said and done,
most of us view the Bible as a storybook. By that I don’t
mean to say that I think we view it as fiction. What I
mean to say is that, more than anything else, it tells a story.
God’s story. Our story.
And that story is so very, very important. It may be
ancient, but it is as relevant today as it has ever been.
From early childhood, I have loved the stories of the
Bible. We had Bible storybooks in our home. We went to
Sunday School (every week, rain or shine!) and learned
stories. The ones I remember the most are the ones I could
“see.” Not necessarily in a picture, but stories told in such a
way that I could imagine them being real, could place myself
in them, could wonder about them afterwards.
Over the years, as I have read the Bible and engaged it
as a preacher and a writer and an educator, I have found
myself inside the stories—not always by choice. Sometimes
they just grab me, even when I’m not looking. A character
asks me a question, and all day long I’m struggling with it.
Or I imagine an event and wonder why it turned out a
certain way.
Why did the Syro-Phoenician woman confront Jesus that
particular way on that particular day? Don’t you wonder why
God preferred Abel’s offering to Cain’s? What do you
suppose Lydia and Paul talked about when she pressed
him to stay at her home?
Sometimes the questions are less profound, but no less
real. As a child I struggled for quite some time with this one:
When God prepares a table before me in the presence of
my enemies, what kind of food is on the
table? I needed to know because what if there was going to
be a food fight? That may seem silly now, but it was a very
important—and practical— question at the time.
All of this is to remember that, of course, there are no
wrong questions (or wrong answers, either).
We need to open ourselves to wonder more about
stories, especially biblical ones. Taking them at face value
can be okay, but we can learn and gain so much more from
them when we allow ourselves to wonder, to question, to
play “what if?” with them a little. It helps to approach them
from a different direction, and to let them challenge us.
Christian educator and friend Susan Burt puts it well:
“When we exercise our imaginative spirit, we move the
biblical story out of literalism, factuality, certainty, and fixed
answers, and into the unknown. The story is born anew—a
liberating, healing story, revealing deep truths, and an
invitation to discern God’s message for this time.”1
The stories in this book are an experiment in just that—
using the imaginative spirit to unlock biblical stories from
their moorings, at least temporarily, and let them float for a
little while, so we might look at them from a different angle.
In most cases, I have taken as my starting point one
small textual “twist” and expanded on it, just for the sake of
wondering. For example, in the case of the Zacchaeus
story, an alternative translation of one word can
change the story considerably. Doesn’t make it better or
worse, just different. In some of the other cases, I’ve simply
sought to change the context for the sake of seeing things
in a fresh way.
In every instance, these are mere moments frozen in a
microsecond of time. They’re snapshots from my literary
imagination. They are not meant to be definitive, they’re just
meant to be stories. One person’s stories. I hope they
inspire your own.
Donald Schmidt
Lahaina, Maui, Hawai‘i
www.emergingword.com
1. In Mike Schwartzentruber, ed., The Emerging Christian Way: Thoughts,
Stories, and Wisdom for a Faith of Transformation, (Kelowna, BC: Copper House,
2006), p. 216.
From Bible Wonderings: Familiar Tales Retold by Donald Schmidt.
Published by www.iUniverse.com. (c) 2006 Donald Schmidt.
“Tell me the old, old, story…”
“Tell me the stories of Jesus…”
“I love to tell the story…”
“We are a people of a story…”
Funny, I can’t think off-hand of a single hymn that begins
“Let’s reminisce about the laws of Leviticus…” or “Sing to
me once again the census figures of Nehemiah…”
That’s not an accident. I think, when all is said and done,
most of us view the Bible as a storybook. By that I don’t
mean to say that I think we view it as fiction. What I
mean to say is that, more than anything else, it tells a story.
God’s story. Our story.
And that story is so very, very important. It may be
ancient, but it is as relevant today as it has ever been.
From early childhood, I have loved the stories of the
Bible. We had Bible storybooks in our home. We went to
Sunday School (every week, rain or shine!) and learned
stories. The ones I remember the most are the ones I could
“see.” Not necessarily in a picture, but stories told in such a
way that I could imagine them being real, could place myself
in them, could wonder about them afterwards.
Over the years, as I have read the Bible and engaged it
as a preacher and a writer and an educator, I have found
myself inside the stories—not always by choice. Sometimes
they just grab me, even when I’m not looking. A character
asks me a question, and all day long I’m struggling with it.
Or I imagine an event and wonder why it turned out a
certain way.
Why did the Syro-Phoenician woman confront Jesus that
particular way on that particular day? Don’t you wonder why
God preferred Abel’s offering to Cain’s? What do you
suppose Lydia and Paul talked about when she pressed
him to stay at her home?
Sometimes the questions are less profound, but no less
real. As a child I struggled for quite some time with this one:
When God prepares a table before me in the presence of
my enemies, what kind of food is on the
table? I needed to know because what if there was going to
be a food fight? That may seem silly now, but it was a very
important—and practical— question at the time.
All of this is to remember that, of course, there are no
wrong questions (or wrong answers, either).
We need to open ourselves to wonder more about
stories, especially biblical ones. Taking them at face value
can be okay, but we can learn and gain so much more from
them when we allow ourselves to wonder, to question, to
play “what if?” with them a little. It helps to approach them
from a different direction, and to let them challenge us.
Christian educator and friend Susan Burt puts it well:
“When we exercise our imaginative spirit, we move the
biblical story out of literalism, factuality, certainty, and fixed
answers, and into the unknown. The story is born anew—a
liberating, healing story, revealing deep truths, and an
invitation to discern God’s message for this time.”1
The stories in this book are an experiment in just that—
using the imaginative spirit to unlock biblical stories from
their moorings, at least temporarily, and let them float for a
little while, so we might look at them from a different angle.
In most cases, I have taken as my starting point one
small textual “twist” and expanded on it, just for the sake of
wondering. For example, in the case of the Zacchaeus
story, an alternative translation of one word can
change the story considerably. Doesn’t make it better or
worse, just different. In some of the other cases, I’ve simply
sought to change the context for the sake of seeing things
in a fresh way.
In every instance, these are mere moments frozen in a
microsecond of time. They’re snapshots from my literary
imagination. They are not meant to be definitive, they’re just
meant to be stories. One person’s stories. I hope they
inspire your own.
Donald Schmidt
Lahaina, Maui, Hawai‘i
www.emergingword.com
1. In Mike Schwartzentruber, ed., The Emerging Christian Way: Thoughts,
Stories, and Wisdom for a Faith of Transformation, (Kelowna, BC: Copper House,
2006), p. 216.
From Bible Wonderings: Familiar Tales Retold by Donald Schmidt.
Published by www.iUniverse.com. (c) 2006 Donald Schmidt.