For the Love of Story and Allegory

Allegory is an ancient form of story that helps us hold a great and often weighty idea in our hands by substituting simpler, more solid characters and events as symbols for the abstract. So a woman's love becomes a rose in a walled garden. Faith growing in the heart becomes a mustard seed, and ancient wisdom a lamp. Allegory in its most compact and gem-like brilliance is a parable – a form of story favored by Jesus Himself.  

The stories here are not brief enough to be true parables, but they are offered humbly with the hope of providing the same kind of crystalline lens that will help us (author and reader alike) examine much greater ideas.