“It was a dark and stormy night…”

Many of you will recognize these as the immortal words of Snoopy, that aspiring novelist.  Snoopy often sat on top of his dog house, hunched over his typewriter, trying to get the rest of his great novel to flow out of that opening sentence.

But what you may not know is that Snoopy actually borrowed those words from Edward George Bulwer–Lytton, a Victorian novelist who died in the 1800’s.

Bulwer–Lytton used those words to begin his novel, Paul Clifford.  And every year, in July, the “Bulwer–Lytton Award” is given to the novel that is distinguished by having the absolutely WORST opening sentence of any novel published the previous year.

Now, I don’t know what Bulwer–Lytton’s novel Paul Clifford was all about, but we all know this much about it, don’t we?  We know that in the first chapter something BAD is going to happen.

“It was a dark and stormy night…”

The reader is just waiting for the story to start off with some accident or crime that will become the problem that has to be resolved throughout the rest of the narrative.

In literature (and in movies) what’s happening in nature often reflects what’s happening at the center of the story. 

There’s a reason why it’s “always winter and never Christmas” in Narnia at the beginning of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  And there’s also a reason why that long winter starts rapidly thawing into a beautiful spring in the middle of that story.  Aslan is on the move.

Or — if you’re more of a Tolkien person — compare the beauty of the Shire with the dark gloom of Mordor. 

Beauty (or the lack of beauty) in the surrounding environment reflects what’s happening at the center of the story. 

Well, the same is true in God’s story.

Creation — all of creation — is the ultimate “surrounding environment” for the ultimate story:  the drama of God’s interaction with his people.  And the central truths of that story (creation, fall, redemption) are always reflected in creation.

Romans 8 speaks of a post–fall creation as “eagerly longing” for some kind of redemption to come.  It goes on to say that creation itself was “subjected to futility” — not willingly, but rather because of something that happened in human history.  The world itself now has to live in a state of “hope” that it “will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain… freedom.” Creation “groans,” we are told.  It groans as “in the pains of childbirth.”

Something horrible has happened at the center of the story.  And now all of creation has been subjected to frustration.  It is eagerly waiting for the problem to be resolved, expecting and hoping that it will be liberated and glorified someday soon.

But for now, look around you… there’s an indisputable brokenness about the world.  Natural disasters, disease, miscarriage, death… we could go on, as you know.

And that brokenness reflects what’s happened at the center of the story.  It reflects man’s broken relationship with God.

In our studies under the “faith” category, we are in the process of putting together the building blocks of a Biblical world–view.  How does the Bible teach us to understand the world in which we live?  How do we understand ourselves?  How do we interpret reality rightly? 

We’re approaching these questions by considering the centrality of the three overarching themes of the entire Bible:  Creation, Fall, Redemption.  Throughout the next few posts under our “faith” category, we’ll be considering what is known as the fall. 

Something’s wrong.