Write On
I recently purchased the Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible. The reason why is that I need spiritual formation. After many years of being a Christian, I have hit a plateau of sorts. It either means that I have it all figured out and I am now at the apex of Christian understanding OR I need to keep climbing and not just walk along flat ground coasting. Easy paths are not necessarily good paths. I suppose it also depends where the paths are leading. No need to take a harder path than necessary.
A friend of mine who does wonderful ministry in Alaska (http://www.lightshineministries.org/) recently wrote that if we are bored as Christians it means that we are not engaged in work that God is calling us to. I feel a ministry that God has called me to is to write.
When I was a kid, I had a fascination with writing something and then publishing it. I still recall an after-school club in elementary school where we wrote and published a magazine of sort where my piece was about Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth's home-run record of 714 and how the TV company Magnavox had a contest associated with this event. Throughout school, I loved to write but thought it effeminate and girly. So, anything I wrote tended to be snarky and smart-ass to compensate for what I thought was the castrative act of writing itself.
In college I wrote for the school newspaper, The Snapper, both news and commentary. It was not like I was the best of the best but most of the other students at Millersville would rather have done something else with their time or didn't want to participate for a sundry of other reasons. I also published, after a falling out with The Snapper editors (probably a combo of their distaste for my conservative commentary...then, like now, most journalistic-types are Libs in the frame of Woodward and Bernstein exposing conservative hypocrisy, malfeasance and shenanigans and my own immaturity) The Snafu which was a parody on The Snapper. I kind of was in a no-lose scenario with The Snafu...if it sucked, I could say that this was the point...its inanity was supposed to mirror the inanity of The Snapper. If The Snafu was good, I could then say that this was the point. Although The Snafu was satire, I could bask in its better writing.
Now, with Blog and Facebook, it is possible to reach a large audience with one's writing. In the cacophony of voices, it is hard to be heard. That is why advertisers now routinely use beautiful and sexy people to pitch their stuff....the eye is drawn to the suggestive nature of the ads...it does not show us to be a mature people. In fact, the emphasis on looks rather than character reminds me of God's statement that "Man looks at outward appearance but I look at the heart" when he selected David to rule Israel. We'd go for Saul as he looked the part, despite his character flaws and truly dangerous temperament. Words have been replaced by image and image is almost everything. How else to we explain the rise of personalities who exhibit little acting ability but sport physical attributes and the images (idols) that our culture craves?
A friend of mine who does wonderful ministry in Alaska (http://www.lightshineministries.org/) recently wrote that if we are bored as Christians it means that we are not engaged in work that God is calling us to. I feel a ministry that God has called me to is to write.
When I was a kid, I had a fascination with writing something and then publishing it. I still recall an after-school club in elementary school where we wrote and published a magazine of sort where my piece was about Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth's home-run record of 714 and how the TV company Magnavox had a contest associated with this event. Throughout school, I loved to write but thought it effeminate and girly. So, anything I wrote tended to be snarky and smart-ass to compensate for what I thought was the castrative act of writing itself.
In college I wrote for the school newspaper, The Snapper, both news and commentary. It was not like I was the best of the best but most of the other students at Millersville would rather have done something else with their time or didn't want to participate for a sundry of other reasons. I also published, after a falling out with The Snapper editors (probably a combo of their distaste for my conservative commentary...then, like now, most journalistic-types are Libs in the frame of Woodward and Bernstein exposing conservative hypocrisy, malfeasance and shenanigans and my own immaturity) The Snafu which was a parody on The Snapper. I kind of was in a no-lose scenario with The Snafu...if it sucked, I could say that this was the point...its inanity was supposed to mirror the inanity of The Snapper. If The Snafu was good, I could then say that this was the point. Although The Snafu was satire, I could bask in its better writing.
Now, with Blog and Facebook, it is possible to reach a large audience with one's writing. In the cacophony of voices, it is hard to be heard. That is why advertisers now routinely use beautiful and sexy people to pitch their stuff....the eye is drawn to the suggestive nature of the ads...it does not show us to be a mature people. In fact, the emphasis on looks rather than character reminds me of God's statement that "Man looks at outward appearance but I look at the heart" when he selected David to rule Israel. We'd go for Saul as he looked the part, despite his character flaws and truly dangerous temperament. Words have been replaced by image and image is almost everything. How else to we explain the rise of personalities who exhibit little acting ability but sport physical attributes and the images (idols) that our culture craves?
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