Ask Now Of The Days That Are Past

“For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of... know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on earth beneath; there is no other.” – Deuteronomy 4:32-33, 39

“Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.” – Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship Of The Ring

I’ve set myself the rather onerous task of going back to create family albums for each year, which means culling back through five years’ worth of photos. It is strange to realize that the younger two probably remember very little of their beginnings in Virginia, and what I put in these albums will likely become what they remember. 

Deuteronomy begins with Moses creating a forty-year photobook of the past. He has brought the Israelites to the brink of the promised land for the second time, but now with an entire generation gone. Some of the people before him were born in the wilderness, not as slaves; what they remember will be through story. We have a need for stories. Have you ever felt this? Children love and ask for stories. I crave them regularly myself, through a good movie or novel.

Part of our need for story is because all stories tell us about who we are, what we are here for, where we are going. Narratives are so foundational to how we think that they determine how we understand and live life itself. Our response to any situation is based on our grasp of the story. Human actions are all enacted narratives. And all narratives inform our actions. There is always a story under the story. Disney movies aren’t just princess tales; they are statements on self-actualization, individualism versus tradition, the primacy of romantic love, and so on, and if we watch enough of them, certain beliefs will seep in. Stories provide us with worldview, the comprehensive perspective from which we interpret all of reality, the lenses through which we see the world.

As Moses is wrapping up the first of three speeches that comprise the book, he does a remarkable thing. He takes off those glasses and holds them up for inspection. He asks, what does our historical narrative teach us about who we are? Who God is? How we should respond? He isn’t just trying to get the facts down. He’s trying to equip a new generation of Israelites with the master narrative they need to understand who they are and how to live, knowing they will be entering a land where the story the majority culture tells will be far different. What stories do our culture and workplace tell about who we are, how things are supposed to be, and how we get there? What story does the Bible tell? What stories are our children hearing at school, in books and TV shows, through our family life? In what ways have all these stories informed how we live, and the stories we ourselves tell?