The Rt Revd Dr John Thomson, Bishop of the Selby, writes:
We all live in stories as the TV soaps and other drama show us. The key question is which is our number one story?
For Christians our number one story must be Christ’s Story and we discover our part in this story as we ‘hang around with Jesus’ as former Archbishop Rowan Williams’ puts it.
This story inspired me as a young person growing up in Uganda and in ministry in Sheffield, South Africa, Doncaster and latterly the Diocese of York. In these settings I have discovered a living story for people from all over the world, a story of love, hope, forgiveness and self-giving service.
In life there are other stories competing to be our number one story such as family, nation, sport and career. Yet none of these last and each will let us down and when made number one shut us off from God.
That’s why living Christ’s story together is so important since this is God’s story which globally and historically has persuaded more people of its truthfulness than any other story, which lasts for eternity and which puts each of these other stories in their proper penultimate place. So as I move into a new phase of my own story as a follower of Jesus Christ, I shall continue to pray that together we will always have Christ as our number one story.
