Introducing some "Hopefully Devoted" writers
The ACW affiliated group, “Hopefully
Devoted” is a great blessing to me. We have now been going for over a year and the
sparkle hasn’t worn off. Following Jane Walters’ lead, I offered to put some of
the group member’s blogging on my slot so they could get the feel of it. For
some the responsibility of doing a blog spot every month can be intimidating,
so this is a good way to be introduced to morethanwriters. The challenge for October
was to write on the theme “Writing and God”. Here was the contribution from
Martin Leckebusch. Acknowledgement of the photo to Robin Martin,
https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/index.php.
Permanent Markers?
Has
something you wrote been consigned to oblivion? It might be a book going out of
print, or an article supplanted when a different topic suddenly hit the
headlines. I have on my shelves a rare copy of a hymnal which contained more of
my own texts than any other hymn book – but which was unexpectedly withdrawn by
the publisher; I never uncovered the reason for that.
Things
like this hurt; our efforts have been devalued. Perhaps part of the pain is a
feeling that our words, artfully crafted and carefully edited, are worthwhile;
we imagine they merit a kind of permanence. They were not inscribed in stone,
but nonetheless, in our culture the written word does seem to carry more
validity than the spoken word: if it’s in print, it’s harder to deny that it
was produced. We may want to cry, with Job:
“O that my words were written down!
O that they were inscribed in a book!
O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock forever![1]
The
ultimate standard is God’s words. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” said
Jesus, “But my words will not pass away.”[2]
Yet
there’s another angle. One morning in the temple in Jerusalem, a woman was
unceremoniously jostled to where Jesus sat teaching, and made to stand before
him. Her accusers said she’d been caught in adultery, and asked Jesus: should
she be executed by stoning, as the Law of Moses said? It was, of course, a
trick question. They had no care for the woman, nor for justice, merely a
determination to trap this unconventional rabbi.
He
wrote in the dirt.
What did he write? It could have been her pardon. It could have been a question
for those attacking him: “Where’s the man?” (Moses’ Law decreed stoning for
both adulterous parties; yet the man had not been detained.) Or it could have
been a plea for wisdom from his Father. We simply don’t know what
Jesus wrote.
Why did he write in the dirt? We
aren’t told that, either. Yet by stooping to write in the dirt, Jesus did not
stoop to the levels of proud gloating and vulgar gawping of some men in that
courtyard. By writing in the dirt, Jesus allowed the woman some dignity as she
struggled with her shame and terror. Then he spoke, enabling her release;
ironically, his written words are lost but his spoken ones preserved as a
permanent marker of grace.
And when
our words are lost in the dirt? Those cancelled articles, those abandoned
drafts? Jesus knows what they said, and why we wrote them, and what their value
was. If we wrote them for him, does it matter quite so much that they are gone?
© Martin Leckebusch
[1] Job 19:23-24 (NRSV)
[1] Matthew 24:35 (NRSV
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