I was reminded of how important a story is as I walked the streets of a village in Haiti years ago. I met a woman who sat with other women shelling peas. They were nestled in front of a gate that kept unwanted visitors from the elementary school behind it. Her name was Dieula, and she was an older woman with the kind of lap you'd like to crawl up into and sit in for a while. Her dress was simple, but her eyes were anything but. With just one look, I could see a hundred stories sitting behind them, just waiting to be released. She told me that she sat at that gate every day, as if she had become the official town-greeter to any who would pass by.
I learned through our translator that she was a Christian. I asked her what I could do to encourage her in her faith as I was visiting her country, and she said, "Tell me a story from the Bible". Wow. Did she really just say that? I had come to this place to share God's stories to whoever would listen and was now being asked to do just that!
Immediately I began to pray behind my own eyes about which story I would tell Dieula. Somehow I landed on the woman at the well in John 4. (Yeah, I thought it was strange, too. Was Dieula married? Like the woman in the Bible, had she been with several men before she moved in with the man she lived with now? She certainly didn't seem to be the outcast that the woman in John 4 was. I mean, what part of that story could possibly connect to Dieula's story? Why would the Holy Spirit lead me here?)
In the seconds that seemed like hours, I suddenly remembered what happened at the end of the encounter between Jesus and the woman at the well. Once Jesus gave her His living water, she left her water pot and walked away satisfied. He hadn't provided her with something that would satisfy her thirst for only a day. He didn't pour a substance into the heavy clay water pot she carried each day into the hot sun and tell her to return for more the next day. No, He was filling that woman herself with what He knew would sustain her for a lifetime; His living water. He made a well within her heart that would spring up at even the mention of His name from that day forward. And do you know what the woman in John 4 did with the water she left with? She ran to the city to fill the pitchers of all who were thirsty, too!
So I told Dieula that I believed she was to do the same with her story. She was sitting at the most visible place in her village, and the people who lived there were just waiting to be filled. I added that, because she knows the best Story-teller there is, she was now obligated to tell His story to everyone who passed by.
You see, Dieula was just a lap full of shelled peas away from the next listener, and so are we. We don't have to go to Haiti to find a good story; we possess the best stories a heart could hold wherever we are. So then why do we wait to find the pea-sheller's instead of walking over to the neighbor who never receives a visitor, or the man who holds a sign at the edge of a highway, or the lady who takes our money at a favorite restaurant? Are we concerned that our story just isn't good enough, isn't interesting enough, isn't full enough with others whose stories resonate a life that was miraculously transformed from recognizable sinner to saint?
It's interesting, I didn't get to hear much of Dieula's story that day, and she didn't even know mine. She was only interested in one story: God's. And my full-heart was ready to spill it into her lap.
Tell someone His story today. I think if we do, we'll see more empty water pots (:
