What is your favorite story? We all have the ones we love to tell. The ones our friends know, the ones that tell about what's important to us, and the ones that tell stories about how we became who we are.

Jesus taught in stories.

He taught what was important and what was complicated in stories. We call them parables, but Jesus told stories that created a world we can identify with and find ourselves in. We are all characters in his stories.

We are starting our conversation about Jesus and His parables with Matthew 13. This is the parable of parables. Jesus opens up and explains things, tells why stories matter and what it means to hear these stories.

Later that same day Jesus left the house and sat beside the lake. 2 A large crowd soon gathered around him, so he got into a boat. Then he sat there and taught as the people stood on the shore. 3 He told many stories in the form of parables, such as this one:

"Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seeds. 4 As he scattered them across his field, some seeds fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate them. 5 Other seeds fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seeds sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. 6 But the plants soon wilted under the hot sun, and since they didn't have deep roots, they died. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants. 8 Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted! 9 Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand." Matthew 13:1-9

Stories create an environment. Join Foundry as we talk about the environments each of us create in our daily life.