An Deagh Sgeul

He taught them many things by parables... Mark 4.2

Sgeul means a story so An Deagh Sgeul is The Good Story or The Good News which is instantly recognisable to Christians as referring to the New Testament. Not only is the New Testament good news on account of its revealing how God redeems and reconciles the world through Jesus, it also contains stories Jesus told to open our minds, broaden our thinking and hep us live more faithfully.

So it was encouraging to learn of a new resource which is being prepared by the same team of creatives and linguists who brought us Christmas and Easter in Lego, narrated through Gaelic. It amounts to an evangelistic tool which presents the parables of Jesus through a contemporary idiom, which offers today's society the opportunity to engage with these timeless stories in a thoroughly modern way.

Now it is up to us to use this gift, in order to do the work of the evangelists we are all called to be. The task is both easier and more difficult than one might imagine. Easier because the product is of the highest quality. More difficult because the evidence is that, most of the time, society isn't listening. Worse! Society isn't even interested. A glance at TV schedules and social media would suggest an obsession with evil and scandal.

Yet might there be another story in the making below the surface: a deeper yearning for a narrative to believe in, which justifies our existence and offers a future worth living for? If so, the presenting issues are more of a caricature expressing our disillusion, while masking our longing for something better. And we have an answer. It is not about the Lego any more than it is about us. Its is about the story we - with the Lego - have to tell...