Where do you Write? by Emily Owen

Last week, I visited a Cathedral, where I was amused to see this notice:

The reason for the instruction was that the nativity scene not be disturbed, I think.  Anyway, it caught my attention.

Do not enter the Sanctuary.

Sanctuary is, in ecclesiastical terms, a holy place.

As Christian writers, I doubt many of us sit down to write alongside a ‘Do not enter the Sanctuary’ instruction. Probably not many of us think, I do not want to enter God’s presence as I write.

But I wonder if sometimes we do not enter the Sanctuary, nonetheless. Not through deliberate choice, but through accidental forgetting.

We’re so desperate to meet a deadline, or frustrated we don’t have a deadline, or longing for inspiration, or convinced we should never write another word, or trying to make ideas work on the page, or…

And we do not enter the Sanctuary. 

We’re accidentally on the edges.

People sometimes ask me where I write? There are a few answers, some of which are: 
‘On a train.’
‘At my desk.’
‘From a hospital bed.’
‘In my head as I walk.’  
‘In a waiting room.’

Even mid-conversation, when I’ve been known to say, ‘hang on a minute. I just need to write that down’.

As I look at this list, though, I notice an answer conspicuous by its absence:
‘I write in a place where God is.’

Do not enter the Sanctuary.

The place where God is can be the place where we write, but we need to get rid of the ‘do not’.

So enter the Sanctuary. Go right in. There’s no better place to be. Ever.

One of my favourite chapters in the bible is John 15, where Jesus talks about abiding in Him.
He’s inviting us to choose to live permanently where He is.
Deliberately deciding to stay with Him.
All the time abiding.
Able to say, ‘I write in a place where God is.’

Jesus said, in John 15:5, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

Apart from Him, we can do nothing.
A part of Him, we can do everything.

Right in a place where God is,
write in a place where God is.