Benedict Atkins

I live by the seaside in the UK with my family, local church and neighbourhood.

My neighbourhood is known as one of the most challenging in the country but those of us who live here know it is full of goodness and beauty. It’s here that I discovered the power of stories to shape our lives — to bring joy, trust, laughter, hope and courage; and to bring people together on the journey of life in its fullness.

One October evening in 2021 I lay down beside my two year old boy, dreading yet another evening spent on his floor trying to get him to sleep. We’d been through all of the stories on his bookshelf and he was still awake, so I prayed for a story.

I was reminded of another little boy in the Bible who often lay awake at night — David, the Shepherd. Before I knew it, I was creating and telling a story at the same time. When I got to the end, my little one asked for it again… but by half way through he was asleep! The next evening he requested the story straight away, and was asleep within minutes.

Learning to be a Dad as well as a pastor, my imagination was captured by the children in the Bible, and by the childhoods of the grownups we meet in the pages of Scripture. I was soon creating a growing set of prayerfully-imagined, playfully told, theologically careful stories inspired by real people from the stories of Scripture.

As an ordained theologian, a disciple of Jesus, and a serving pastor, it was important to me that I carefully prayed and studied around the lives of these characters. I say this because where we know little about some of their childhoods from the Scriptures, I have prayerfully imagined something of how their childhoods may have been, in a way that connects with what we do know of them and their stories in the Bible, and helps people connect with them in turn. I have been careful to imagine these parts of the stories in a way which represents God truthfully, what we know of him, and in a way that invites the younger listener to find themselves in the story and in so doing, to help them identify themselves as someone whom God is longing to know and be friends with — all the more important in a world seemingly run by grownups!

So I offer these stories to you, praying that they would inspire you and those you share it with to imagine themselves in the Story of God, connecting meaningfully with characters you had perhaps not had the chance to ponder so deeply before. I wonder what else you might imagine of their childhood — and I pray it would inspire you in the story God is writing in your own life too.

I hope not only that little ones love it, but also that it inspires grownups in their life and faith too.

I love sharing with Yoto because it is close to my heart. As a parent of little ones, these stories come not only from my heart but also from my daily parenting life — the tears of joy and laughter, the worries, the hope, the trust, the faith.

If even an ounce of the joy that these stories have brought our family is brought to you also, I would be delighted.

I am halfway through a set of stories all about some little girls of the Bible!