The Joy of the Lord is my Strength by Rebecca Seaton

 The Joy of the Lord is my Strength by Rebecca Seaton

Like me, you may have heard this in church sermons or in worship songs. It certainly sounds encouraging: joy = strength: who doesn’t love a punchy one syllable message? Joy/Lord/Strength is easy to remember.

But what does it actually mean? In Nehemiah 8:10, where this verse appears, it is the word of God to a disobedient people. God is reminding them that He loves them (takes joy in them) and that they can draw strength from this. Strength also has a much wider meaning than the physical strength that we might think of immediately today. Here, it speaks of a place of refuge, a security that comes from knowing God truly loves us, no matter who we are or what we have done.

I wanted to explore what this means for my life and what it means in my writing but found I can’t really separate the two. The nearer I draw to God (and believe me, it’s a process!), the more my own journey spills out into my writing. Although my writing isn’t overtly Christian, themes of redemption and forgiveness are central to my plots and the lives of my characters. Just as I have had to learn to live in God’s freedom, so my characters find themselves breaking free from the chains that hold them down. It’s no coincidence that some of my favourite characters in my own writing and that of others are either morally ambiguous or openly flawed in some way.

But that’s why every story deserves a fitting ending. My characters often start with the odds stacked against them and, more than once, caused or compounded by their own errors. But when the love, acceptance and forgiveness of others wraps around them, they can’t help but find strength in a new definition of their place in their world. When they achieve their destiny, be it slaying dragons*, uniting worlds or finding a missing treasure, I hope my readers are cheering them on. What I’d also like them to know is that God is doing the same for each of us.

* There are no dragons in my novels. Yet.

#amwriting #amwritingfantasy #ACW     

 

Rebecca earned second place in the 2017-18 Pen to Print Book Challenge with her first novel, A Silent Song. She is currently working on a fantasy trilogy involving a prophet, a dodgy queen and a powerful relic.