Doh!

It amuses me how easily the obvious is obscured by the familiar.

I’m talking ticking clocks you can’t hear, or how many of my former pupils couldn’t point to where the sun rises or sets despite walking to and from school with long shadows stretching in front of them every day. 

Slightly panicking (is that an oxymoron?) about this month's blog - my rather empty mind eventually meandered to thinking about the bible. It was the simplest thing that struck me, and with fresh force; the bible was written. 

Emerging from my mental fog, I saw Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others, selecting inks and parchment, and settling down on a bench or a chair, quills poised, hesitating before writing the first letter, the first word, the first sentence - in that sense, just like any writer.

 Then the Lord said to Moses ‘Write this…’ Exodus 17 v 14

‘The Lord said to me, “Take a large scroll on it…’ Is 8v1, Jer 36v1

‘Then the Lord answered me and said ‘Write the vision…’ Hab 2v2

‘It is written, man shall not live by bread alone…’ Matt 4v4

‘Sit down quickly and write fifty’ Luke 16v6 Parable of the Unjust Steward

‘The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and teach…’ Acts 1v1

All those practical considerations: time, inclination, inspiration, and availability of materials pressed in. I wondered how Moses found the time to write, or Paul, in prison, penning those letters that have sustained the church for generations? 

There is also, however, a spiritual dimension to writing explored in the bible. God is a writer. 

God inscribed the ten commandments on stone tablets, and, in the New Covenant, writes the law on our hearts by His Spirit: ‘You are an epistle of Christ…written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart’ 2Cor3v3

In some deep reality known only to God in eternity, we have become characters in His reality-play. When we write fiction, we invent characters that seem to be real and hopefully ‘come to life’ for our readers. But with God, we do become alive in Him. This staggering reality is often obscured by the familiar demands of the day, the publishing deadline, an illness to overcome, grief, or adjusting to a new job, and so on.

Jesus didn’t say ‘The pen writes what the heart is full of’ but he might well have done.

And what about ‘We write because He has first written us’ as an alternative to ‘we love because He has first loved us’? 1 John 4v19

So…back to being worried that I had nothing to offer this month and that prayer of emptiness, just shy of panic, that I offered up?

This has reminded me not only to trust Him in times of apparent emptiness but to realise afresh that the ultimate Writer lives in me as I live in Him. 

To close with a familiar scripture - I hope it encourages you if you’re finding yourself bereft of words:

Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith…’ Heb 12v1.

Finis? 

Maybe not!