Bible Stories

Most of us met these in a Sunday school room and left them there. Told properly they are the most interesting things ever written down, and they were written to be told. Each one here is short enough to hear in one sitting, keeps the hard verses in, and ends where the story was always going. More are added as they are written; the ones read aloud are also at The Fireside.

Thou Art the Man

A king on a roof, a letter carried by the man it would kill, and a prophet who tells a story about a lamb until the king passes sentence on himself. Then four words, and the psalm David wrote that night.

He Wist Not

The strongest man in the Bible woke up, shook himself, and went out as at other times. He did not know the LORD had left. The whole of Samson, harlot and hair and blinding left in, and the last prayer, which God answered.

Sin Lieth at the Door

Two brothers, two offerings, and a warning God gave before the first murder: sin is crouching at the door, and you must master it. The question, the mark, the city, and the blood that speaks better things.

The Door God Shut

A man built a boat for a hundred years on dry ground. The world ate and drank until the day the door closed, and it was God who shut it. The grace Noah found, the leaf, the bow, and the ark Peter says is still open.

Where Art Thou

A serpent who begins with a question, two people in fig leaves, and a God who comes walking in the evening as He always had and asks: where art thou. From the breath in the dust to the coats of skins and the sword that kept the way.

The Second Fire

Three denials beside a charcoal fire; then a beach, a second fire Jesus built Himself, and one question asked three times. What the forgiveness was made of.

In His Right Mind

A man nobody could hold, living in the graves. Jesus crossed the sea in a storm to reach him and left him sitting, clothed, and in his right mind. Then the town asked Him to go, and the man asked to stay.

Songs in the Night

Two men with their backs torn open, singing at midnight in the stocks. Then an earthquake, a jailer with a sword at his own throat, and the shortest gospel in the Bible.

God Meant It Unto Good

Pit, prison, forgotten for two full years, and the only line the narrator repeats is that the LORD was with him. Then, to the men who did it: ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good.

But If Not

A gold image, an orchestra, a furnace heated seven times over. The two words three men said before they knew the ending, and who was seen walking in the fire with them.

Open His Eyes

The city ringed with an army at dawn, and a prophet who prays only that his servant will see what is already on the hill. Then a feast for the enemy.

Abide With Us

Two people walking home on Easter afternoon, explaining the crucifixion to a stranger who turns out to be the crucified. A door at dusk, a loaf, and a burning heart.

I Am He That Liveth

John in exile on Patmos hears a voice like a trumpet, turns, and falls at Christ's feet as dead. Then the right hand on his shoulder, and Fear not.

Get Thee Out

A childless old man walks out of the greatest city in the world because a voice told him to, toward a place the voice would not name. One old man, a 'get thee out,' and the friend of God.

God Will Provide Himself a Lamb

A father told to kill his son gets up early and walks three days. The sentence most retellings skip is the key to the whole chapter, and the hill has a name the Bible will not let you forget.

I Will Not Let Thee Go

God chose the cheat, met him in a field and by a river, broke his hip with a touch, asked his name, and gave him a new one. Then the sun rose on a man who would limp for life.

I AM

An eighty-year-old shepherd, forty years past the only thing he ever tried, walks over to look at a bush that does not burn. Five objections, and the name Jesus would answer with in the temple.

When I See the Blood

A lamb at dusk, blood on the doorframe, a door nobody opened until morning, and something going through the country at midnight. The night the church's whole vocabulary comes from.

Stand Still, and Go Forward

Backs to the water, Pharaoh's army over the hill, one week free and asking for their chains back. Stand still; go forward. The night Paul calls a baptism.

The Scarlet Line

The first confession of faith in the promised land came from a prostitute on her roof, at night, to two spies under the flax. The Bible calls her the harlot every time, and puts her in the line of Christ.

Whither Thou Goest

A famine, three funerals, two widows on a road, and a Moabite girl who would not go back. Four chapters, not one miracle, and at the end a baby on Naomi's lap who is the grandfather of David.

Only Her Lips Moved

A woman praying so hard the priest thinks she is drunk. No sound, only her lips moving. What she asked for she got, and what she got she gave away, and the boy heard God say his name in the night.

Lest Israel Vaunt Themselves

Found hiding in a winepress and called mighty. He argued, asked for three signs and got every one. Then God cut his army to three hundred and sent them with trumpets and clay pots, so that no one could say his own hand had saved him.

The Battle Is the LORD's

Forty days of a whole army afraid, one shepherd already anointed and still running errands, and what he said to a nine-foot man about whose battle it was. You are not David in this story. You are the army.

Would God I Had Died for Thee

A son who raised an army against his father, a king who left the city barefoot and weeping to spare it, and the rawest sentence of grief in the Bible, said by the man who had just won.

How Long Halt Ye

Eight hundred and fifty priests of Baal on one side, one man on the other, and a test no sane man proposes. Then he poured twelve barrels of water on his own altar, and asked the only question.

Now Mine Eye Seeth Thee

A good man loses everything in one afternoon. His friends sit in silence a week, then spend thirty chapters explaining why it must be his fault. Then God answers out of a storm, and explains nothing.

If I Perish, I Perish

God is not named in the book, and He is everywhere in it. An orphan made queen, a decree to kill every Jew, a king who could not sleep, and a gallows with the wrong man on it. For such a time as this.

Here Am I; Send Me

The year the king died, a young man saw the LORD on a throne, and the first thing he said was a woe on himself. Then a coal from the altar on the exact place he confessed, and a question that was not a command.

Jonah

The prophet who ran from mercy. Nineveh was the enemy's capital, and God sent His prophet to spare it. Why Jonah ran, and the sign Jesus chose for Himself.

David's Mighty Men

The men who came to David in the cave when he had nothing, and what they did afterward.

The Thief Did More Than Believe

Six acts in one breath, from a man with no hands free.

Elijah Under the Juniper Tree

Day three of Abide: the prophet who had just won, asking to die, and the God who sent bread and sleep before He sent a word.