Don Miller gave a talk about the power of story. It was similar to a great talk I heard him give last year...but it didn't bother me to hear it again. Some quotes that really connected with me...

• Story = "A character that wants something and overturns conflict to get it."
• What is meaningful in a story is meaningful...only because it is meaningful in life.
• We have a relationship with Scripture that is really strange. We sit down and say, "What's in this for me?" What if it's just a story about God? What if He just wants us to get to know Him?
• You can have a greatly flawed character, and that's okay, as long as the character sacrifices himself or herself for something.
• Success doesn't tell a very good story. It takes a character with flaws who does good.
• The story that we are telling ourselves is almost always different than the story we are telling the people around us.
• Conflict offers us the opportunity to appreciate joy.
• Commercialism robs us of the conflict, which in turn robs us of being involved in great stories.
• In real life, we wish for conflict to go away. But it never will.
• We are taught that conflict goes away through the gift of Jesus. Jesus was not the climax. Conflict still exists.