Dripping Taps and Invitations by Emily Owen

 

During a family Christmas get-together, we were all sitting closely in the dining room. A combination of hot food, lots of people, said people talking, meant that the temperature in the room climbed. I felt a drip of water land on my head. Looking up, I realised I was sitting under a pipe, from which the water must have fallen.

I said to my niece, who was sitting beside me, “A drop of water just fell on my head! I must be sitting under a dripping tap.” My sister, from a different table across the room, drily responded, "how apt". My niece asked, “why is it apt?” and so the idiom was explained to her. She thought about it, then turned to me:

“Sometimes you are a dripping tap, because you talk loads, but sometimes you are not, because you don’t say much at all.”

In this blog, I’d like to focus on a short non-dripping-tap phrase found at the beginning of Genesis 12: ‘Go…to the land I will show you.’  

Last week, I was in my local Christian bookshop. I chose a book to give my dad for his birthday, I chose (with the help of a little boy who was keen to help me) a calendar for myself, and I went to pay. As I was waiting, a book behind the checkout caught my eye. I expect many of us recognise the ensuing phenomenon: the book came down from the shelf, all by itself, and ended up in my pile of things to buy.

It was reduced, so I could at least tell myself that it was a bargain.

The book is called ‘A Rabbi Reads the Torah’, and it was on the first page that I learned something new-to-me, despite having read ‘Go…to the land I will show you’ many times before.

I’d previously read those words from God as an instruction to Abram.

Apparently, however, the words carry more strongly the meaning of invitation.

God is inviting Abram to go to the land God will show him.

Would you like to come with Me and see what I have in mind for you, Abram?

We are part way through the first month of 2022. What lies ahead for us in the coming year?

Probably, for most readers of this blog, writing will feature at some point.

‘How great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge!’

Romans 11: 33 NLT

God, who knows all things, knows what 2022 holds for us. He knows if it will find us writing, or editing, or publishing, or journaling…and He knows what the end result will be.

When we sit down, perhaps staring at blank screens, frustrated because inspiration isn’t coming – and, indeed, when the words are flowing – maybe we could remember that we are not alone on the journey. God, who calls us, is there, too. Not saying "Go" as a ‘get on with it’ order (though He sometimes does need to give me a kick up the spiritual backside), but as an invitation.

Would you like to come with Me and see what I have in mind for your writing, for your days, for your life?