Heather Rankin Doherty

Shimon the Leper Heather Rankin Doherty

Many of us are familiar with certain Bible stories. When we happen to reencounter these passages from time to time, we are generally willing to grant them another listen. If they were the subject of a sermon we might even be pleased with the points raised about this or that character in some new way. But what if the next time we came across one of these stories we were to deliberately pause and go a bit deeper? What if we dared to imagine what it might have been like to actually be one of these persons? A certain pastor once chose to do this in his sermon. It all started by giving the character a name, then a family, and ultimately some very human responses to the circumstances the story posed, even if the Bible does not. Although an excursion from his normal way of expositing the Word in a service, for once on that day, a very familiar passage became much more than that. After all, who doesn't like a good story?