It’s the one question that plagues me every time I sit to write. And it’s the one question that spurs a million other questions to bombard my thoughts. “Is my writing pointless Lord? Will this post make a difference in anyone’s life? Lord please don’t let these words return to you voidless. Please Lord make them count.” I don’t know. At times my confidence level wanes, but then I hear a song that is on repeat mode in my head. I hear Dory singing, “Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.”
So I write. Laura Story once wrote in her book, “When God doesn’t fix it,” “A song writer writes songs to help them process life.” I will say the same about me. I write to process the things that are going on around me. A friend recently asked when I started writing. That was an easy answer. I began writing as my dad was dying. Slowly his organs were shutting down and we all knew what was going on but were fearful to voice it out loud, afraid it would make the end come sooner. My outlet for all my pent up emotions was writing.
As I said in my recent book launch, “More often than not, when I write I see the Lord’s hand in the dimema I am facing.” Writing for me is a spiritual discipline. I’ve come to the point where I need this blog site. I have discovered that writing is one of the venues the Lord uses to speak to me. Writing helps me navigate through scripture. Writing causes me to dig deep and search out the hidden ways of our God. I want to know the original Greek or Hebrew words used in the verses I just read. I like to research the history of the day. What was it like to be a people and a land occupied by Roman rule?
”Just keep writing. Just keep writing,” sings Dory.
Yesterday I wrote a post about Jesus revealing His Ressurrection to a group of women who had been to His empty tomb. When I began writing, I had no idea where the words would lead me. At first that’s all they were, just words. I would write one word at a time then that set of words became a sentence. And soon those sentences became a paragraph. At last those paragraphs became my story. Finally, at the conclusion I said, “Oh wow! I see it. I see the lesson for me in the story of those women.” Those women had been the last to leave Calvary’s Hill and they made sure they were the first to the tomb. As soon as it was appropriate and the Sabbath had ended allowing all work to begin again, these women headed to the tomb where they supposed the body of their Messiah still lay. They had all they needed to perform their own act of worship. They came as the sun was just cracking the horizon. They came with their myrhh and frankincense. These spices and ointments would stave off the smell of decay from their Lord’s body. That’s why they came. They came sacrificially. They got up early. It was their one duty and nothing would dissuade them.
When they were told, “He is not here. Now hurry go and tell the disciples,” they obeyed immediately. They rushed off. And after all those things, they were rewarded. Before even revealing Himself to the disciples, Jesus revealed Himself to these beautiful souls who were willing to show Him extravagant love.
That lesson was for me. Last night before falling asleep I told Jesus, “I want to love You as these.” I dreamed last night of the Lord leaning down, “Greetings.”
”Just keep writing, Just keep writing,” the Lord sings. “You are My poem. I am writing a story inside you and from beginning to end throughout the middle, You will grow stronger word by every single word.”