When you write, you feel his pleasure by Philippa Linton

Taking joy in creativity ... (Image by StartupStockPhotos on Pixabay)

Last week in church I heard a sermon that challenged us to think about death.  The preacher posed the question: "what legacy would we like to leave others when we die?"

I thought about this for a second, and then it came to me.  “Words. That’s my legacy – words.  My poems, my stories, how I express my faith through the written word, should be my legacy, or at least a vital part of it.”

I’m a writer. I may only have had very limited success and exposure with my writing, but that’s neither here nor there.  I’m a writer: it’s my gift and vocation.  Not my only one, not one by which I earn my daily bread, but it’s one of my main passions in life. 
Writing is self-expression but we also want to communicate through it – to create a memory of a beautiful landscape or paint an imaginary world through a poem or story or novel, so the reader can enter that place through their imaginations.  Writing can also explore the darker reaches of human nature, helping us to understand more about the hidden depths within ourselves and others.  Above all, surely as Christian writers we want to use our words to bless, heal, to help bring light and hope and joy and peace. 

Scottish runner Eric Liddell, who won Olympic gold in 1924 and later became a missionary in China, is quoted in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire as saying: “God made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.”

I’ve always loved that line. Whether or not Liddell ever actually said that, the scriptwriter Colin Welland (who won an Oscar for his screenplay) was making an important point about the depth of Liddell’s faith.  In the film, Eric makes this response to his sister Jenny, who like him is a committed Christian but is worried that Eric’s sporting ambition means more to him than his faith.  Eric wants to show her that talent and faith are not incompatible.  Far from it: Eric believes that God made him fast because it was God’s pleasure to do so.  After winning Olympic glory in Paris, Eric then went on to serve God in China.  Tragically, he was to die in a Japanese civilian internment camp in 1945. Yet his legacy was this: not only do we remember his great achievements in his sport, but his willingness to live a whole-hearted life for God.  It’s right to praise people for their achievements, but what will outlast us all, beyond all our successes and failures, is a legacy of love.

Tell yourself: "God made me a writer and when I write, I feel his pleasure."  When God gifts us in a certain way, he wants and expects and indeed commands us to use those gifts.  Our first aim must be to use our gifts for his glory and for the building of his kingdom.  But using our gifts brings us pleasure too, pleasure that makes all the hard work worth it.  The boundless, abundant, overwhelming, immeasurable creativity of God flows through so many channels … including us.

Our creativity is God-given. So may we write for his glory and pleasure – and our pleasure, too.

P.S. Colin Welland died in November 2015, aged 81.  His Oscar for his Chariots of Fire screenplay was well deserved.  It's an intelligent and moving film, portraying the issues of faith, prejudice, grit and determination in the lives of two great athletes, one a Christian (Liddell) and the other a Jew (Harold Abrahams), both of whom overcame external and personal obstacles on their paths to Olympic glory.