I don’t consider myself an expert in many things and few people come knocking on my door asking for my opinion on the news of the day. But I do believe part of my role as pastor is helping people to place their trust in the right things. Often my job is simple: I direct people to trust in the promises of God. But we live in a world of false narratives and empty promises, so the work becomes subtler: We listen for the whisper of God’s true story amidst all the noise.

One of the things that strikes me as I read the Scriptures is that often the most important part of the story takes place on the edges rather than on center stage.

Take for instance the story of the birth of Jesus in Luke 2:1-7. Luke sets the scene by naming the big deals of the day – Emperor Augustus and the governor Quirinius (verses 1-2). These were the movers and shakers standing on the center stage of history. But then the storyteller zooms in on a family of relative nobodies living on the edge. He directs our attention away from the rich and powerful to the story of a poor baby born among livestock and laid in a feedbox. To put this another way: if Jesus were born today, would his birth be in the headlines? Probably not.

Or take for example the story of Shiphrah and Puah in Exodus 1:15-22. The mighty king of Egypt becomes afraid because the Israelites are becoming too numerous. So he orders these two Hebrew midwives – Shiphrah and Puah – to kill every Hebrew boy who is born. But because of their faith, Shiphrah and Puah disobey the Pharaoh’s order and make up a story to fool him. If this were to take place today, you would never see the faces of Shiphrah and Puah on the cover of the magazines in the checkout lane. Pharaoh would dominate the headlines and the nightly news. And yet thousands of years later, we know the names of Shiphrah and Puah. In contrast, the storyteller of Exodus doesn’t even dignify the king of Egypt by recording his name.

My point is this: it’s always worth asking what’s taking place outside of the dominant story of our day, because God tends to work on the margins, in the places we would least expect. If the Bible is our guide, we should look for God not in the penthouse but in the manger, not in the loudmouths of history but in the still small voice in the wilderness, not in the spotlight of earthly glory but in the shadow of the cross.

Strangely, this thought gives me hope. It’s easy to feel despair when we listen to the dominant stories of our time – stories of corruption, disasters, and violence. But those stories are not the whole story. More is going on here than meets the eye.

Furthermore, I am uninspired by the stories offered by our earthly leaders. Anyone who tells us that he or she alone can fix our problems is selling us a package of empty promises. One story that particularly bothers me is the one that says, essentially, “Might makes right” or that winning matters more than righteousness. There is this sense that we can dominate our way to safety and prosperity, which is a false promise and always has hidden costs. In contrast, Jesus taught us that love is the way (i.e., Mark 12:29-31, John 15:12-17, Romans 13:8-10, and many more). As I’ve said before, greatness is not goodness. Leaders should tell stories that call us to greater courage and compassion, not fear and cruelty.

The stories we tell shape our understanding of who we are and the way the world works.  Perhaps this is part of our calling as Christians in this moment: To tell a better story. When the world offers lies, we can tell stories of truth and promises worth trusting. When tyrants tell stories of fear, we can tell stories of courage – like the story of Shiphrah and Puah. When we feel despair, we can tell stories of hope – like the one about the Savior born in Bethlehem.

If we believe the gospel is the best story ever told, we will always have a better story to tell. Place your trust in this story, because our God will not disappoint us.

Written for the Brodhead Free Press and the Independent Register as part of their weekly “Pastor’s Corner” column.