Jesus and the Great Dark Frog

Posted by Jennine Lanouette on Thursday, April 8th, 2010

Last weekend, I went to church and got a lesson in storytelling. This is, of course, how it has been since the medieval era – go to church, hear a morally instructive story and be uplifted by it. I happened to be visiting my parents and it was Easter Sunday. So off we went.

Not long into the service, the minister gathered all the children at the front of the sanctuary and announced he had a ghost story for them.

“When I was a boy,” he began, “one day my parents and I went on a picnic. We played games and had lots of good food. It was a splendid day. Then it was time to go home. But on the way home, we got lost. So my parents pulled the car over and told me to stay there while they went to get directions. Then they gave me a stern warning not to leave the car because these were the woods of the Great Dark Frog.

“So I stayed there, all by myself. But, after a while, I got bored. So I went out to explore a bit. Soon it started to get dark and then suddenly before me was the Great Dark Frog. ‘Ooooh!,’ he said, ‘A child! I love to eat little children!’ And he jumped up and down in delight.

“Then he said, ‘But I have just eaten a whole bunch of little children! I am too full to eat you now! So I am going to jump rope 100 times so that I become hungry again and then I can eat you, too.’ Then the Great Dark Frog pulled a jump rope out of his pocket. He tied one end around a tree and gave the other end to me to turn it for him.

“When he got to 20 jumps, he said, ‘Yum! I’m feeling an appetite coming on!’ After 30 more jumps, he exclaimed, ‘Now I’m starting to feel hungry!’ And he kept jumping, jumping, jumping.

“Finally, when he was up to 90 jumps, he said he was very, very hungry. But I could see he had also gotten very, very tired. This gave me an idea. Still holding the rope, I ran around the tree as fast as I could, and then around and around and around again, until he was bound so tightly he couldn’t move. Then I tied a big knot and went off to find my parents. The end.”

All the children squealed and clapped, but the minister wasn’t finished. He looked down at them and asked, “Do you think this story is true?” And they all called out, “No!” Then he asked, “But did you enjoy it anyhow?” To which they chimed, “Yes!” Then he said, “Sometimes stories don’t have to be true to tell us something true, do they? So, is this story true? . . . Or is it Truth?”

Not often do we get to see our formative influences laid out so starkly before us. See, this is the church I grew up in. And these lessons aren’t new to this church. So, apparently, I was taught at a very early age that stories exist in our lives not to be taken as literal truth, but rather to give us signposts guiding us to Larger Truth.

Then the children were sent off to their Sunday school classes while the minister stayed behind to take his annual shot at interpreting, for the benefit of the grownups, all the metaphoric meanings in the rolling away of the stone to reveal an empty tomb and the disciples’ subsequent sightings of Jesus walking the earth again.

Glad I don’t have his job.