Drawing Outside the Rule Box

Last night my wife said to me “drawing outside the rule box again are you?” She has a knack for mixing metaphors in a strangely accurate way. Drawing outside the lines, breaking the rules and thinking outside the box all were morphed into a pretty accurate summation of the line of reasoning I was pursuing at the time. Parables are powerful forms of communication because they carry so much truth in such a small package--they are timeless and in a few words we can carry profound meaning. In a few words we can also say nothing: j fkna tou psnas airs or the same letters JFK NATO UPS NASA IRS. They are the exact same letters in the same order just bunched together in ways that connect shared meaning. So when my wife says to me “drawing outside the rule box” she is drawing on depth of meaning that has been bunched together in order to communicate. We have all done this with our ONE stories recently: I was blind and now I see. I was a prodigal who found his way home. I was seeking meaning and found it in Christ. In a short powerful way we can condense our story into a meaningful parable.