An autumn invocation

Image by Anja-#pray for ukraine# #helping hands# stop the war from Pixabay

The November leaves are decaying, falling, turning shades of crimson, golden, ochre and scarlet. This is the season of relinquishment, of accepting that leaves have to die in order to generate new life for next spring.

I am picking up a mood in some of my fellow ACW writers … some people have been writing about the need to let go of cherished writing dreams in the hope that something new may emerge in the place of those dreams. I have been challenged and encouraged by the honesty of my fellow writers. We’re all at different stages in our writing. All of us have experienced different levels of success – or ‘failure’. I put that word in brackets because I don’t think anyone who has a call to write is a failure. Certainly not in God’s economy. If He has called us to share our words with the world, then He will bless the endeavour.

We have to acknowledge that the blessing may not arrive in the way we had hoped. Writing certainly doesn’t guarantee an automatic pathway to fame and wealth. Becoming rich and famous through one’s writing is highly unlikely, even for well-established authors. Many published writers experience frustration and heartbreak, let alone those who are trying to break through in their chosen field or genre.

As for me, I am looking through my unfinished stories – the poems that need working on – and I feel slightly daunted by the task. Writing is hard work. It requires practice, discipline, attention, focus. Blood, sweat and tears. My motivation has been lacking in recent years simply because life takes a toll. A succession of bereavement has sucked emotional energy out of me. But there they lie, on my desktop, on my personal Cloud drive and in folders, journals and drawers … my unfinished writing projects.

We all have a story worth telling. We’re made in the image of God, made to reflect His creativity, imagination, thought, reason, fellowship … and compassion. That is who we are meant to be – people aligned with His will, in harmony with His creation, and eager to share His love and peace with the world. It sounds so simple but it can be so hard.

So let the Holy Spirit come like a gusty autumn gale to blow away my dusty complacency, lethargy, my lack of motivation, to stir me up, to kick me into action! Let Him come like a storm and whip those leaves up in a frenzy.

And let the Spirit come like tongues of autumn flame in vivid shades of molten gold and scarlet, to give life and fire and vibrancy to the gift of imagination that lies within me.

And let Him come like healing oil, to anoint that gift of writing and enable it to spread out like a pool of blessing to others. Let Him be the sound of silence after the storm, a still place for me to drop into, to hear His affirming voice and to soak in His presence … and emerge with renewed vision and energy to write.

May all of us know His blessing, His affirmation, as we give our writing gifts to Him – for Him to use as He wills.

I am the administrator for the education and learning department of the United Reformed Church. I am also an Anglican lay minister. I wrote a devotional for the anthology Light for the Writer’s Soul published by Media Associates International, and my short story ‘Magnificat’ appears in the ACW Christmas anthology Merry Christmas Everyone.