The French philosopher, Montagne, once said, “My life is filled with many tragedies, most of which never happened.” We choose how to interpret the information with which we are bombarded daily. We choose what to let in, what to keep out, and how to react and think about the things that happen to us. Really understanding that and practicing it in our daily lives in a positive way can be very empowering.
One of my biggest problems is that I seem to be always thinking. Even when I pray, I often have undercurrents of the day running through my head behind the words I am saying out loud to God. If my mind is never still, will I ever really know that He is God?
That leaves me looking for the empty spaces in my brain. I know they are in there. God orders moments of rest for us. He tells us to be still. He spoke to the prophets, not in the whirlwind, but in a whisper. In the quiet places of my mind, I’ll find the message of the Holy Spirit.
But where are my empty spaces? I know where they are not. Not in front of a blaring television or a flashing computer screen. Not gossiping on the telephone or shopping in the mall. Not fretting about chores that need done or stories to write.
There are times and places for all of these things (though some of them should have none of my time at all). But there should be a time in each day when I can be still, stop thinking, concentrate on my breathing and wait for God’s whisper. It will take practice, like all things worthwhile, but in a world full of information and distractions, it is necessary.
Have you found your empty spaces lately?
Category: Christianity
Pursuing Gentleness
Paul admonishes Timothy to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. I am no Timothy, but if I am trying to use my writing to share Christianity, then surely I should also take these pursuits to heart. It goes without saying that righteousness and godliness are challenges every day. However, I think one of my biggest challenges from this list is actually gentleness.
Why would I say that gentleness is the hardest pursuit? I believe it is because gentleness is the one admonition that truly requires us to remove all judgment, see things from others’ perspectives, and gain our best hope of leading someone out of the darkness and into the light.
In other of his writings, Paul admonishes to lead other’s gently, especially those who have turned away from God in the things that they do. He also warns to be careful not to fall into the same trap of evil as the one you are trying to turn back to God. Sin is so tempting because it is the easy way. Trying to make the right choices is much more challenging, which is why we must have Jesus in our lives in order to have a chance of doing what is right. The easiness of sin is also why being gentle when we are trying to instruct in ways that are opposed to sin is so important.
Of course, Paul makes it clear in other texts that there are times, once gentleness has been tried unsuccessfully, when a person must be handed over to the devil in the hopes of shocking that person into coming back to the light.
But this kind of heavy hand is not the purview of a writer of fiction. No, I should reflect a gentleness that expresses the faith, love, endurance, righteousness, and godliness of a strong walk with Christ.
Thankfully, my writing is something I can edit, ponder, and “perfect,” not like my conversation, which is often quick to judgment and often not gentle. So, like all readers of Timothy, I must strive every day to be gentle, not just when I am trying to write something. And that may just take the most endurance of all.
Defining Christian Fiction
Just what is good, Christian fiction, anyway? Should it be all sugary and simple, with clear black and white edges? Should there be major near-misses and only glimpses of tragedy? Or should it be all messy and obscure with very few answers and more questions than you can shake a stick at?
For myself, I like to break the phrase into its obvious parts. First, it is good fiction. Good fiction shows without telling, renders the reader through the experience, has vibrant language full of nouns and verbs, reflects the age in which it is set, leaves the reader with an enhanced sense of what it means to be human.
Christian fiction centralizes primarily on characters who believe in Christ and are striving to live accordingly or on characters who are coming to know Christ. Its characters should reflect their knowledge of the Bible, make choices according to its precepts, ask for forgiveness when they inevitably stumble.
Just as “a life worth knowing must be lived,” I believe good, Christian fiction must reflect what it means to really be Christian in any age. That includes making bad choices sometimes, having really bad things happen to really good people, and dealing with wanting God to say yes when you really know, deep down, that His answer is no.
Abraham Lincoln once said of Christianity, “it hasn’t been tried and found wanting. It hasn’t been tried.” The reality of that statement is what makes me want to write. I think God gave me a talent for writing so I could help myself figure out what it means to be Christian in this modern world. I also hope that I am supposed to be sharing that talent (and that I don’t just have some super ego that wishes that’s what He wanted from me).
I take very seriously the admonition that teachers of the Word are held accountable for what they teach. I also take seriously the power of fiction to make us think differently about the world in which we live. If I create good fiction and Christian fiction, hopefully I will help somebody besides just myself understand the challenges that stand between our own needs and the simple but powerful edict that sums up Christianity–to love.
Perfection Versus Good Enough
This week, I am particularly working on picking my battles when it comes to my overwhelming compulsion to be a perfectionist. First of all, perfectionism doesn’t exist. All I can do, in the end, is my best. In addition, my best is further actually qualified by the parameters of the current task, the deadline I face, my current state of health, etc. Finally, I often work too hard at being better in areas that are good enough, thereby leaving areas in my life that could actually use more effort dangling in the wind.
The most important point about perfectionism, however, is that no matter how good I am at anything, I don’t have to be in order to achieve the most important thing of all–the mercy of God. God gives me salvation through the grace of my faith in Jesus, whether I am perfect at the latest thing I am working on or not.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not completely off the hook. Because of my acceptance of God’s love, I have become, as Paul tells us, “a new creation.” I want to do what is good and right and loving, extending the grace that has been offered me to others as well.
So, if I am going to worry about perfection in anything, it should be in my walk outside the life of sin. Being dead to sin, I should wake up each day trying to be perfect in Christ, forgiving and loving others and myself when I stumble, being open in my communication with God, from whom there is no secrets, so that I might be forgiven my mistakes and start the next day anew, His mercies surrounding me to help me do better this next day I have been given.
And I don’t exceed in anything that is truly important to God if I get caught up in the day-to-day spiral of trying to bring to perfection that which only requires good enough, especially when love should truly be the greatest goal of all.
Masks
I recently had to attend a convention-type event for my day job, which turned out to be a very pleasant experience. For an introvert like myself, that outcome for such events is not usually the case. At any rate, for myself, as with even the extroverts in the room, events like conventions are places where we can become aware of the different faces we wear in the world because these are the types of places where we meet a lot of people we do not know. In a psychology or literature class, you might call these faces “masks.” For an introvert like myself, I have to put on a brave face in crowds. I make myself smile, nod at people’s comments, and try to think of good questions to ask so I can add something to the conversation. Around my family, I can immediately allow my displeasure to be shown. When I am around strangers, I have to find more delicate ways to get a negative opinion across, if that is what is called for.
When I start to think about the different masks I wear, the different roles I play in this life–from wife to daughter, from sister to friend, from employee to boss–I am struck by the realization that God sees all my masks, every one of them, not just the mask I put on to pray or go to church on Sunday morning.
You understand, I am not talking of masks as fake facades, but as differing projections of the self. We are, after all, slightly different if not enormously different, in different situations. But God sees the person underneath and the projected self all the time, even the much of the time that we forget He is watching.
How alike would my masks become if I could see myself through God’s eyes all the time? I would become a better person, certainly, but would I be a different person at home visiting my parents than I am teaching a class to my employees?
I would hope that any differences would be of such little importance (perhaps better posture in one situation than another or slightly less formal language, for example) that my masks are all essentially the real me. And, hopefully, the real me is the projection of God any true believer in Christ should always strive to be.
Are You Too Young For Glue?
I was relishing one of my Dennis the Menace books the other day, when I was particularly struck by one of my favorite cartoons that I had completely forgotten about. In this one drawing snippet into the life of a rascally young boy, Dennis is standing in front of his mother, perfectly cute and cuddly looking as only children and puppy dogs can be, but covered randomly from his head to his toes with pieces of paper. The caption for the picture reads, “You were right, Mama, I’m too young for glue.”
When I finished chuckling and put the book back down, I was struck by the idea that this simple truth might be applied to my own, Christian life. How often, after all, do I plunge head on into situations or plans without first considering what the Bible, and thereby, God, has to say about it? The first example that came to my mind was Christ’s admonition to remove the moat from our own eye before worrying about the speck in someone else’s. How often, in a single day, have I wound up with bits of paper stuck to me without even realizing it through the rush to judgment and gossipy talk in which I have engaged?
I’m too young to play with glue yet when it comes to many aspects of the Christian life, even though I have been trying to live my faith as a way of life for more than 30 years.
How about you? Are you old enough for glue yet? Let’s keep praying and studying the Word, and I am confident God’s grace will get us there.
God is not restrained
The last time you read about the adventures and perils of David and his good friend, Jonathan, the son of David’s enemy, King Saul, did you happen to linger for any time at 1 Samuel 14:6?
I didn’t, but I’m glad today that the preacher at church did, for in that verse, Jonathan, who is about to face down 20 Phillistines with only the aid of his armor-bearer, proclaims his faith in the Lord by stating that God is not restrained by many or by few when it comes to accomplishing His will.
As the preacher asked this morning of the congregation how many of us had let ourselves give up because we were too few, I was struck anew at the concept of the mustard seed and God’s ability to do more than we can ever imagine with even the smallest gesture on our part that is in keeping with His will and accomplished through faith.
God cannot be restrained. God will not be restrained. I find that comforting in the wake of so many crazy things that seem to be happening in our world. I also find that comforting as a struggling writer who feels that God gave her an ability to write for a reason. I, of course, am often thinking that reason should be something much more grand and glorious than I have heretofore accomplished, but Jonathan’s example reminds me that the smallest thing I do with my writing might just be what God had in mind when He handed that talent to me.
So, ask yourself today, where in my life am I forgetting that God cannot be restrained by many or by few? Go ahead. Prayerfully and with faith, take that tiny step you’ve held yourself back from when you were thinking, as I was, that it would not be enough.
Living the Fruit of the Spirit
As I sat in Bible class on Sunday morning, listening as others were picking out what they had found of note in the previous week’s reading of Galatians, a couple of pretty powerful conclusions came to me.
The first began as I looked at the footnote in my NASB for the phrase “the righteous man will live by faith,” which said that what was meant here was actually closer to the word “faithfulness.”
Now, faith and faithfulness, I believe, are two entirely different animals. In our venacular, we tend to equate the word faith with belief, which implies just believing that Christ is risen is sufficient for salvation. But faithfulness means something beyond mere belief. Faithfulness
is more like believing by doing. Aha. Now, we have a problem. If I must believe by doing in order to be redeemed, then do my actions and not grace save me? Perhaps a better definition of faithfulness might be belief through being.
Let me explain.
The second grand conclusion I discovered Sunday was the fact that the fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23 are actually the “fruit” of the Spirit. Singular, not plural, implying a crop or harvest of something. Once redeemed, the one who lives in faithfulness is seeking to be one who embodies all of the characteristics of Galatians 5:22-23. This is a state of being, fostered by the indwelling Spirit, redeemed upon inevitable failure by the grace of Christ.
Which brings us to the question of legalism. When Christ said his yoke was light, I believe he meant in comparison to the yoke of fulfillment which constituted Jewish religion at that time. The Talmud (as opposed to the Torah, upon which our modern OT cannon is based), which elaborated on the items of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, had grown to include so many items, that I am sure living up to its mandates would be something like living in the mind of a person with OCD. Wash hands so many times before touching this, step on a crack, break your mother’s back. That sort of thing.
When Christ proposed to lift the yoke of this kind of living, He could not have meant that living
would suddenly be easier. How is it a lighter yoke to be loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, meek and in control of the self–all the time? It is lighter, perhaps, in that instead of following a distinct set of rules, the freedom of salvation means the freedom to be, not do. The actions that happen as a result of being are much lighter than actions required from a list of doing.
I think the Western mind may have a problem with this concept that believing still requires doing because we do not wrap our minds around the concept of dualities. There’s a little bit of the feminine in the masculine and vice versa. We all have good and evil. Being is more than just believing, even though our actions, ultimately, are not what save us. When Christ, and subsequently Paul, smashed the legalistic requirements of salvation, they opened the door to a way of life that embodied more than any written law. Living the law of Christ is very different from living the Talmud. It is much more challenging, but it is also freeing because, as the Nicole Nordemann song reminds us–“His mercies are new every morning.” No matter how often we fall, as long as we sincerely repent, Christ helps us rise to begin again.
A few of my favorite . . . authors
Maybe it’s not a law on the books in some creepy, courthouse basement, but it is a law of nature that to be a good writer, you need to be a good reader. Also, I think you can tell a bit about the kind of writer a person is based on his/her favorite authors. Here are some of mine.
If you are interested in good, Christian fiction (and, presumably, that’s exactly what has found you here), then you may have already enjoyed some of the great work of Francine Rivers. Her Redeeming Love and The Last Sin Eater are page turners that will have you laughing, crying and in suspense. You really get to know and love her characters. And no Christian writer that I’ve come across does a better job of historical Christian fiction than Ms. Rivers. These books are for teens on the verge of adulthood at the youngest, if for no other reason than the depth of the issues the stories deal with.
My absolute favorite writer on general Christian topics (I guess you might call him an essayist) is Philip Yancey. He is straightfoward, more than well-read on a wide variety of subjects, and not afraid to admit when he doesn’t have an answer. He is “tuned in” to God in a powerful way, and taking time to read some of his books can only enhance your own walk with and understanding of our relationship to God. At least, that’s been my experience.
Since I have always been interested in history and other cultures, there are a few mass audience writers that I also enjoy. Bernard Cornwell is someone who does a great job of rendering you through the experiences of events that happened hundreds of years ago. Edward Rutherford also does a great job of going far back in time and making us understand the world from different perspectives. I especially liked his Sarum and London books.
Having a Master’s degree in English, I also enjoy good, stand-the-test-of-time literature. Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Jane Austen are some of my favorites. Newer writers like Toni Morrison and Leslie Marmon Silko also rate at the top of my list for their ability to represent all of us at the same time they see the world from their unique, cultural perspectives. Fiction that has the lyricism of poetry will get me any and every time.
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