Do you like a good mystery?  Here’s an unsolved mystery from the Crouse family.  I was about 14. We moved from the Vancouver street parsonage to the house next door.  The whole family remembers packing up a cardboard box of my sisters Nancy Drew Mystery collection, and the Newsweek magazine that featured the resignation of Richard Nixon.  Somehow, the box never made it to the new house.  In the move, something happened, and we are still wondering.
     Do you like a good mystery.  The mystery man of the Bible:Mark 14:51-52.  Who is he?  Why is he only wearing a sheet?  Why did he flee? Some see in this young man symbolism, a figurative character representing the resurrected Christ escaping from his burial cloth; to me that doesn’t make any sense, because what would running away in fear have to do with the risen Christ?  I accept this as a literal story.  To add to the mystery, I read the Greek word for young

I had a professor that told the story of a trip he took to the Caribbean Islands. In a little church during a worship service he noticed a woman that glowed with an angelic face. Later he asked her why she was so happy. She led the man down a path through the woods. As they came to a small graveyard she stopped in front of 4 graves: her husband and three sons. She explained a few years earlier, an illness had swept through the area, first taking her husband, and then one by one all three children. For months she was in pain and agony, wanting the Lord to take her also. One day, as she was mourning once again at the grave, she felt the presence of the Lord; the Lord said she had to make a choice: she could continue mourning as she had done for many months stretching into years, or she could live for Christ and be his testimony. She told the Lord she wanted to live for him. Soon the most incredible peace and joy flooded her life. She still missed her family, yet now she had a greater purpose, to tell others about the Lord. As the woman finished telling her story, she turned to the professor and said, “That’s my story, what’s your story?” The professor didn't know what to say. Compared to this woman's story he could not think of anything to say, so he said, “I don’t really have a story.” And the woman said to him, “Sir, everyone has a story.”

I remember thinking the same thing as a boy. Back in the late 60’s/70’s there was a time when the fad was to have dramatic stories of conversions. One group in my area was the Jesus people. Many Sunday evenings a few Jesus people would come to church and I’d hear testimonies of a life of drugs and stories of dramatic conversions. Even as a boy, I would think I don’t know the date I became a Christian, I was not a drug user or an alcoholic, I just quietly accepted Christ sometime when I was young. My story was not that exciting.

Everyone has a story. John chapter 9 is a story of a blind man who was blind from birth, miraculously healed by Jesus. The blind man is never named. Change the details and it could be anyone. Although there are many lessons in this chapter, I want to focus on how often the blind man tells his story. All that he seems to know is that “I was blind but now I see.” (He must have borrowed that line from Amazing Grace.)

You have a powerful story. Maybe others have read the Bible more times, been to the ends of the earth and back again, and have a dramatic conversion experience, but your story is second to none. Somebody will be enriched by your story told to the level of your understanding. Jesus Christ trusts you to tell your story to the level of your understanding and experience. Don’t apologize for your story. 

John 8:1-11

A woman has a son who will sit in jail for the rest of his life because he murdered his wife. The mother loves him anyway. .

The only reason some parents appreciate pets is because the children love them so much. Like my cat nicknamed PIB (Pain in the ________).

The examples represent a certain kind of love in which value is created by being loved. I have a bottle cap collection that would look worthless to most people, yet to me the bottlecaps represent an era from my childhood. Our first inclination is that we want to be naturally lovable, yet it is a step of maturity and humility when we come to realize that we are sinners by nature, not worthy of God’s love or anybody else for that matter, and accept God loves us anyway in spite of our sinful nature. God creates value in us by his love.