Stories and massage
To give some context, Mum has a rare disease that began rapidly destroying her ability to move, speak and other bodily functions about three years ago. To ease her pain and severe depression, my husband (Chinese Australian) and I were in the habit of giving her massages and somewhere along the way, I started reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe aloud to her. That led into telling or reading stories during the massages because she liked the stories, one of the few things she ever requests. One handy thing about telling stories is that it’s no problem when your hands are busy or have massage lotion on them!
I can’t remember all the Bible stories we told as they were mostly triggered by things Mum said, but a few stand out.
The Prodigal Son: Mum once shared that she knows God is invisible, but beyond that, she found it hard to picture what God is like. Mum has a very deep love for my husband and his siblings, so it made me think of this story. Afterwards, I asked her how she’d feel if one of her kids went away, and whether she’d want them to come back. When she said yes, I shared that God is like this – always longing for us to come back, even more than the dad in the story.
Zacchaeus and ‘the sinful woman’ at the home of Simon the Pharisee: I told these stories because Mum once shared things that all had to do with questions about one’s worthiness to approach God.
Jesus healing the disabled woman in Luke 13:10-13: this wasn’t normal storytelling but we used this very short passage as the ‘text’ of a lectio divina prayer. I told the story orally three times very slowly as the three of us went through the steps of the prayer. She was able to picture Jesus and the woman very clearly. (Lectio divina is a kind of meditative/imaginative prayer focused on a short scripture passage.)
Lost sheep: my husband was chatting with Mum about things we’d talked about before, especially how Jesus is a shepherd and wants us to return to Him. He told this story, then all on her own, Mum said, “Jesus, enter my heart.” Astonished, he probed a bit, then she said she was sorry for rejecting God. Again surprised, he asked her how she felt and again, unprompted, she said she felt like a new person.
Links in the chain*: as always, there are more links in the chain than can be told – all the people who have prayed for her during the past 20 years, my husband reading Mark with her before she got sick, the mum of one of their friends who visited a lot and encouraged her to pray, two dreams my husband had about resurrection, encouragement from a pastor, a nursing aide in the nursing home who spoke to her about baptism, and more than I know of.
Used with permission of ALC.
* For an explanation of this idea see Telling the Gospel Through Story, page 25.
