Narrative Theology- An invitation to the story

What an amazing stories we read from Scripture.  These are not just any stories, they are stories that actually happened!  Scripture contains the stories of those who lived before us.  People who walked with God and also people who lived radical lives for the sake of God.  As people who live differently from these people that we read about, it can be hard to compare or try and live the way they did. 
Narrative theology is not anything really new.  Narrative theology reads the stories as they are, as simple stories.  I do not mean by this that they did not actually happen.  But, I think narrative theology may regain something that we have lost.  This loss has come from the way that we even read Scripture.
Scripture is to be read as a story.  It becomes a telling of how God spoke to Israel, how God brought Israel through great times of triumph, exile, and redemption.  God seeks out a relationship with His people by even creating them "in the beginning" (Gen. 1:1).  This very verse seeks to ask the question of why God even creates.  As a Wesleyan, God creates to be in relationship, and that is what the story tells us.
Therefore, if the story of the Bible is about reading God's seeking of a relationship with creation, should how we read the Bible matter?  The answer is a dramatic YES!  If we read the Bible as a mere habit, or something we have to do, we miss the very story imbedded within the very Scripture that we hold on too.
As a pastoral ministry major, I have learned so much about the Bible.  I have learned many new things about Scripture from the language, to the context, to the very people that wrote the various books contained in the Scriptures.  Yet, for me, it can be easy to read the Scriptures as a habit, or to even skim through sections because "I think I know it all." 

Maybe my writing of this blog is just for me.  But, a challenge that I have been presented with is that Scripture is actually so much more.  When reading "Cat in the Hat" or "one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish" we read them with such enthusiasm.  We enjoy reading those to children.  We may even try and add different voice inflictions to the story to make it fit more with our personality.  Yet, with Scripture, one of my professors say we read "Cat in the Hat" with more enjoyment than we do our very Scriptures that tell of God's seeking to be with us!
I am not trying to say by any of this that the theological influence of the passages matters, nor would any other scholar committed to narrative theology.  Yet, stories matter, the theology of the story should be inviting.  We, as humanity and God's very creation, are invited to participate in the very story written by reading and living the story!  I invite you to participate within the story.  Let the Scripture speak to you and welcome you into the loving relationship that God invites us to.