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I know some great storytellers and could listen to some of them for hours. The best of these raconteurs have a love for people and manage to reveal the intelligence, ingenuity and sometimes foolishness of others without causing offence or hurt.

I sometimes wonder though if storytelling is the everyday art it once was. It’s easy to rely on screens and podcasts for such entertainment and education.

Of course a good novel also meets this need and this morning a friend recommended a good book to me which I had downloaded and started to read within half an hour.  Already very satisfying but perhaps too easily available, and not as good as listening to a real-person-live storyteller.

I suppose that’s the advantage of hearing Jesus in person two thousand years ago. We know he was a great teller of stories because people came and came again to hear him knowing that his telling of the closeness and intimacy of God was backed up by his God-centred authority and miracles.

The advantage of the live-story-teller is that there is on the spot interaction with question and answer, interjection and response with repetition and clarification called for and given whenever needed. Good story-telling needs a live audience in which the audience are participants by giving constant feedback amid laughter and heckling to keep the tale-teller on their toes.

Yesterday I felt for those who would read aloud the genealogy of Jesus list from the opening of Matthew’s Gospel (vs 1-17). Today’s gospel (beginning at verse 18) is an easier read beginning “This is how Jesus Christ came to be born.”

We know the story well, very well, perhaps too well – and the risk is that opening words lead us to wander away deciding ah, i’ve heard that one before.

Take a moment to consider that most of those reading this newly published life of Jesus in the year 80 (ca) had never heard this story before. They had heard of Jesus and his teaching and miracles, but they had never been told of the early years of Jesus’ life.

So imagine their interest when someone who knew what they were talking (writing) about began: “This is how Jesus Christ came to be born.”

This is the great joy of praying with gospel passages: I read the passage, then imagine myself in the scene, listening, noticing, seeking and hearing.

In these Advent days, today just one week from Christmas, perhaps as you walk or work, drive, or sit under a tree, you might find it helpful to walk alongside Mary and Joseph towards Bethlehem. Allow yourself to be taken into and share their unrecorded anxieties and struggles.

You might be inspired and encouraged by the intimacy you feel with Joseph and Mary as they journey in anticipation of the arrival of their child, Emmanuel, God-with-us.

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Take an initiative and send me a date time and place for a FFF cafe-catchups. john@fff.org.nz. I’ll advertise these on each morning’s post throughout Advent.

TODAY New Plymouth
Thursday 18 December 1.30pm
Stumble Inn
200 Mangorei Road
New Plymouth. Joan