God's spoken world.

This week I started a book called Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World.  I'm not very far into it yet, but I must say, it is beautiful!  The writing style is different; it's a little tilt-a-whirl-ish, circling among multiple topics simultaneously.  It's almost a stream-of-consciousness but not quite as crazy and definitely not as annoying.  Reading it feels like having a conversation with a friend.

The author is super down-to-earth, not a lofty philosophical theologian type.  In fact, he's a college literature professor who's never published in the spiritual/religious genre before.  (Oh, it's a Christian book.  Guess I should have mentioned that.)  In fact, he even uses curse words and slightly crude images here and there.  You may think I'm crazy or "un-Christian-ly", but that's refreshing to me.  It's real.  It indicates freedom in Christ, a religion built on relationship instead of rules.

Rambling aside, here's what I wanted to share:

The author, N. D. Wilson, talks about the language of God.  We so often get frustrated when we don't hear God speaking to us, but the truth is He is speaking--all around us, every moment of every day.  We expect God to speak in English, but why would He?  He's not American.  Or British or Australian or Canadian for that matter.  Why would God even need words to communicate?  I mean, He's God for crying out loud!

Wilson says we don't hear God not because He isn't speaking, but because we are listening for the wrong language.  God's language is His creation.  He spoke it into existence, didn't He?  He spoke and a mountain appeared.  We look at that and say, "Oh that's too hard; I'll make a shortcut," and we choose the word mountain to mean the actual thing.  God doesn't need shortcuts.

But mountain isn't the answer I needed, you may say.  That's fair.  But God speaks things through His creation as well.  Just one example: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." (Matthew 6:28-29)

Listen for God's voice today.  His words are all around you.

P.S. I highly recommend this book.  You can borrow my copy when I'm finished.

Fiction for a change.

I'm a day behind on posting my WFMAD writing for yesterday.  (Imagine that.)  I decided to try some fiction today.  Enjoy!  (And if you don't, don't tell me.)

She had walked these same halls before, sat at this same desk in this same office under these same blinding fluorescent lights, but today was not the same as any of those days before.  Today was different—not just because it was a new month and a new year—no, today she was a new person. 

Nobody had noticed anything yet.  As she walked through the office building, got her coffee in the break room, everyone nodded their usual hellos and good mornings, but they were too preoccupied with their own small lives to notice even such a drastic change in hers.  Rather than make her feel insignificant, though, it made her feel strong.  She could fool everyone; they would never know until it was too late—if they noticed at all.

She sat at her desk in front of her computer, cup of coffee in hand, just like she had every other morning.  But she didn’t check her email.  She didn’t browse the day’s top news stories.  She simply sat.  And thought.

The world was still the same—still spinning on the same axis, still orbiting the same sun.  The people were still the same—still hurrying on the sidewalks below, still yelling insults into their cell phones.  So why was she different?  What had changed?  She had to admit she liked the change—it made her feel powerful, secure—but she didn’t understand it.

She had the vaguest notion of something strange happening as she slept, but she couldn’t be sure.  Had someone entered her house while she slumbered?  Had an intruder somehow done this?  She had no way of knowing.  She’d thought to get an alarm system when she first moved to the end of the lonely street, but things always came up and the money was never there. 

She had no nearby neighbors to notice if someone strange had been lurking on the street.  And of course she lived alone.  It had never bothered her until now.  Of course, bothered wasn’t really the right word.  Wasn’t she happy about this change?  Wasn’t she glad it had happened—however it happened?

Yes.  She was happy.  She needed this.  She stopped asking questions and simply accepted it.  Whatever it was, it was going to change everything.

Wfmad and wishes.

One of my favorite YA authors does a writing challenge every year she calls Writing Fifteen Minutes a Day.  It lasts for a month, and she gives prompts on her blog every day, which you can choose to use or not.  Here's the link if you're interested: http://madwomanintheforest.com/wfmad-day-2-your-abundance-of-time/.  I'm going to try it.  I always love any excuse to write.  I might (read will) fail here and there--I'm already a day behind--but that's okay.  We'll see what happens.  Here goes!

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan."  Yet we spend our time wishing and then lamenting the perceived death of those wishes.  Why not plan their existence instead of planning their funerals?  What kind of place would the world be if people spent their time planning instead of wishing?  What kind of life would I have if I did the same? 

Why do we prefer wishing over planning?  I think it's because wishes can't disappoint.  You'll never fail at wishing, but you can--and likely will--fail at executing those wishes.  We value our pride over progress.  We crave the safe and familiar, because we know it keeps us secure and keeps our pride intact.  If we try something new, we're making ourselves vulnerable to failure and rejection.  Nobody likes that.  But without failure, we would never know success.  How often is success achieved the first time trying something?  Hardly ever.  If we stayed in our little bubble without ever trying anything, sure, we wouldn't fail, but we wouldn't have a chance to succeed either.  If we gave up after that first failure, we wouldn't ever make it.

Think of some of the greats of history:  Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Martin Luther King, Jr.  What would have happened if Martin Luther King, Jr., had said, "I have a dream," but didn't act on that dream?  If he had just wished for a different world and not planned for change?  Where would we be?  Or what if Franklin doodled bifocals and lightning rods in his journal but never planned to create them?  The world is nowhere without wishers who plan and act.

My mom says her mother used to tell her, "Wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which fills up faster."  While a little crude, the saying has some truth.  Wishing gets you nowhere.  Wishes aren't tangible.  Wishes don't change anything.  We can't wish for change and just hope somebody else acts on a similar wish.  We must act.  We must plan.

What are your wishes?  Maybe they're wishes for a new career or even a new hobby.  Maybe they're wishes for rebuilding relationships or being a better role model.  Wish all you want.  The more wishes, the better!  But give those wishes legs to walk, hands to reach out.  Make something of them.  A wish alone is worth nothing, but a wish paired with action is worth everything.