Story as Imagination’s Handshake
I LOVE the children's message. I love the kids running forward, getting high fives, raising their hands before a question is asked, and of course, the unscripted utterances of wanting to give the right answer. It's the perfect spiritual sorbet to cleanse a parishioner's palette before settling into sacramental worship.
Deacon Eric asked the kids this week, "Have you ever had to say you're sorry?" Hands shot up. "What kinds of things have you had to apologize for?" Eager anecdotes faded into streams of cuteness consciousness. But before he could land the plane, one six-year-old boy blurted a revealing, unvarnished confession:
"You don't want to say you're sorry because then kids will know that you're weak. And then they'll be even more mean to you."
Mic drop. Childlike wonder, imagination, and naiveté replaced with self-preservation, scarcity, and a heart already learning to callus. Lord, have mercy.
Leonard Sweet writes that “story is the imagination's handshake—the way we recognize ourselves in the other and the other in ourselves.” This boy's truth was a window into something heartbreaking, but also achingly relatable. His story revealed the common thread binding all image-bearers: the fear that if we admit we were wrong, if we confess our mistakes, we'll be exposed as frauds and possibly disqualified or rejected.
What if weakness isn't what we think it is? Poet Luci Shaw sees God clothed in the ordinary—in metaphors, in parables, in all the ordinariness of the lives we live. Perhaps our wounds, our apologies, our admissions of inadequacy aren't signs of weakness at all, but rather the very places where God meets us in a “This-is-my-body-broken-for-you” way! When Jesus says "Do this in remembrance of me," he's not asking us to remember his pain or catalog our shortcomings. He offers an ordinary metaphor of a meal, a daily metronome to keep us in rhythm, to remember who you are in light of who He is. We’re more than our mistakes, our wounds, our insecurities. You're beloved—not despite your weakness, but often revealed most clearly through it.
That six-year-old was already learning the world's brutal mathematics: vulnerability equals weakness equals more pain. But the gospel offers different arithmetic entirely. In God's economy, our weakness becomes the very place where his strength is perfected, where our stories intersect with the greater Story. The courage to be vulnerable isn't naiveté—it's the wisdom to trust that there's One who sees everything and calls you beloved anyway. So go ahead, make amends. Shake hands. Invite God, who’s already present, to draw near.
