We worshiped with South Church this morning and the sermon was on the topic of scripture being alive. I tried to listen to all the points, but sometimes my mind wanders when a certain subject triggers the wandering. I was very interested in where my mind was taking me with it so I journeyed a little ways into my imagination.
So, what if you were an author and you could create characters to fill your blank pages with lessons, wisdom, beautiful promises?....You just called your book TIME (not like the magazine :) BUT like something that has a beginning and an end and only what these characters do or think in this amount of time is recorded. You could really enjoy (we really don't have good words to express how much delight you could find in them...at least I am not thinking of any that suffice at the moment) your characters.....I have heard that some authors actually start to think of their characters as real and imagine what they would do in each situation because they are all extremely different in how they perceive their surroundings....life....how they react to their feelings...I read that one author joked about feeling like looking for the FACEBOOK statuses of her characters because she had lived with them in her mind for so long :)
Anyway, say at some point, the author decides to set the characters free..... no longer write what they will do, but let them choose. But, the author assures them he is always there over and over and over again, giving them the open-ended offer to hand him the pen just by asking for him by name. He dedicates the pages to them and hands them the pen. They take the pen with great enthusiasm and start writing up a storm....figuratively and literally....they write about everything they desire, they write themselves pages and pages about stuff they want, they write about their plans for their future, they create other characters to enter their pages, they write about love pretending to be experts, they write so much about life that the pages accumulate and the book becomes heavy.....so they rip out the sections that bore them and the "useless" information in the beginning of their story, so the book will be easier to manage and more interesting to share with people that seem important to them...the dedication page gets torn out in the process. They write and write wanting to impress, but they never feel like they are LIVING....they hate their story and one day....they don't even feel like writing anything....they are tired and just want to lay the pen down.
They have a fragment of a memory of the author, but....by now....they can't remember his name. They turn to the front of the book and realize they have ripped out the pages with his name on them
and they experience utter hopelessness.
So they say to themselves...."WHAT WAS HIS NAME?".....when no answer comes, they find themselves asking out loud, "Author, are you here?" as if he could hear them. (insert SMILE here for those of us who already know.)
I think the first prayer is always quite simple....don't you think most of the time it is something like, "Can you really hear me?" It's like the first toe that hits the water in the ocean of faith.
Then the answer comes. (Isn't is great when you not only receive the answer, but it is YES!)
For no matter how many promises GOD has made, they are "YES" in CHRIST.
And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of GOD. -2 Corinthians 1:20
The pen is surrendered to the AMEN.
The creativity part continues, though....SO BE IT is the beginning of the power of the creator, the author, empowering us to write with meaning....and we can only connect because of Christ. We can take each idea....delight, struggle....each prayer to HIM only because of the AMEN.....the one who puts a stamp of approval on the
SO BE IT, so it WILL BE
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