Confessions of a Wayward Writer

 

What do you do when you believe God has called you to a vocation and you engage in all manner of ‘good’ things instead of that which you are called to? 'Good', as in necessary everyday activities like three sets of tax returns, including your recently deceased parents’ final return, and any number of things – wash dishes, cook, do yard work, work on estate processes, spend time with family… What do we do when we know we should be spending time and energy on activities we are beckoned to do by that quiet voice we have come to trust as God’s?

Confess with a sincere heart, move on, and get down to it. And so I confess:

I am a writer. I believe God has called me to it and He did so after I searched for the creativity that exists in each of us. We who are created in the image of God have a spark of The Creator in us. I searched for mine after giving up on the notion that I was creative on the basketball court. While that may have been so, if the divine creativity for me was that of an athlete I would be writing this as a former NBA player, or at least that is how I see it.

I did a lot of business writing for the phone factory and was well thought of for my efforts. White papers, business cases, reports, and all sorts of communications that paved the way for me to have a nice little career.

I hadn’t started my search for the creative spark at the time but when a student ministries director asked me to do the writing for the church’s monthly newsletter, I took to it and enjoyed the outlet. I wrote about our youth activities and what was coming up and did some pieces about the depth of our mission trips and camps. What I really loved doing was zeroing in on a particular person and writing a story about him or her and what I found special about them. I could and did write from the heart on those occasions and they were the ones that touched people. My mom and mother-in-law were my biggest supporters in this and they carried it over once I heard the call to write creatively.

I am not a good writer and I feel this way for several reasons. I do not do it consistently enough to say I have a writer’s life but I wish that I could claim that I have such a life. My work needs a lot of editing and I need to learn the craft more completely. I write some good pieces here and there but nothing that has been published outside of my own blogs or social media outlets. Some of that has to do with me lacking the confidence to believe the piece is worthy of printing and some of it has to do with me lacking a tough inner shell to withstand the common practice of writers to collect rejection letters.

I completed a novel a couple years ago but it has been left idol. It is the book I believed I was urged to write by the Author of our Faith and yet I cannot bring myself to rewrite it as it desperately needs. The book needs to be cut it in half if there is any hope in having a publisher even look at it. The story is mortally out of date due to my delays and I need to refigure the timeline and at least bring it up to the point where it touches on the pandemic.

All of this falls short of a legitimate excuse for falling short of having a writer’s life, one meant to touch the hearts of at least one person with each piece I publish. For all of this, I am sorry and will rekindle my efforts.

I am a writer. My best of friends Mike and Jim say so. Mike even puts ‘Writer’ as my occupation when he uses me as a reference when he is job seeking. Mike is a professional editor so it must be true that I am a writer. Jim is my coach and he tells me how touched he is when he reads my work. He was key in showing me the error in a short story I have now submitted several times to start my collection of rejections, so it must be true that I am a writer.

Ani is a published writer, has a master’s in fine arts (MFA) Degree, and is an entrepreneur. She took a short story I wrote almost on a whim for the family and put it in a picture book for us. My mom had me autograph her copy, so it must be true. I guess this means I need to retract my earlier statement that I have not be published outside of my own media resources.

What led to me writing this confession was Phil talking to the men on our Zoomeeting the other morning and telling the group what a good writer I am and how he appreciates the works that I put up. Having spent that morning in the presence of the Holy Spirit, I was uplifted, touched, and convicted all at the same time. Phil is a published writer himself, so it must be true.

Thus, I must confess that I fall short of God’s call to me.

I looked on the back of a piece of intarsia my late father did for me and he said, “Together in His grip, love Dad”. And so I’ll sign off on this confession as I frequently sign off on my Calvary's Thread posts.

In His grip,

jerry

I'm Sorry

Revisionist History? Balderdash! (Alternate Title)

WE have been studying revisionist history all our lives, every last one of us who are now living and breathing and all who have gone through modern day educational systems. To say that the removal of Confederate statues and public memorabilia honoring the breakaway republic is revisionist history is balderdash. To say that removing racist and offensive team monikers and removing the Confederate flag from public symbols is changing history is bunk. WE cannot change history.

I do not often write regarding politics as I believe Jesus is a-political and I wish to be in line with His political thinking. However, I am seeing on my limited social media outlets, Instagram and Facebook mostly, that some of my friends and colleagues are decrying the removal of Confederate icons, statues, and symbols, as well as the removal of racially offensive corporate symbols, as an attempt to change history. I am trying not to think less of them for doing so and my struggle is raging.

WE cannot change history. To borrow a tired phrase, it is what it is. WE have been offering in our schools, our textbooks, our museums, and a host of other media outlets, a revisionist history constructed by those in power in order to shade themselves in some sort of romantic light so they can feel better about themselves and justify the continued oppression of races of people different from themselves. WE have romanticized the genocidal actions as WE tried to wipe out our American Native brothers and sisters. This is historical.

I was not taught of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 in school and yet it is a part of history. It took the murders of several black people in rapid succession by white policemen to bring it to light for me and put it in the news. I would have loved to say that those murders culminated in the murder of George Floyd but sadly it has continued, and continued with a blind eye from those in the highest levels of our leadership.

I did not learn of the Trail of Tears in the classroom. I picked up a book about, and perhaps by, Will Rogers, a Cherokee citizen. The first chapter was about the hardships and degradations he suffered on the Trail of Tears. I was so ashamed that WE did this and so much more to inhabitants of our land that I could not continue reading. I don’t know where the book is. It is a treasure I snagged from a church rummage sale to support work we did at the Vah Ki Presbyterian Church and it is still in this house filled with hundreds of books. I will find it, take my medicine, and read it cover to cover.

WE weren’t satisfied that we had denigrated a race of people and forced them to live in designated reservations set in the most inhospitable parts of the continent. I am friends with residents of the Gila River Indian Community and while reading of their history and the history of a man who tied our church into this community I learned that WE had to take this reservation and dam the river which gave it life, beauty, an agricultural culture, and their identity and plunge them into a depth of poverty that made them wholly reliant on the WE that never publicized or taught this bit in our history classes.

WE cannot rewrite history. We the People can rewrite the history books and the anthologies WE use to teach history and continue the righting of wrongs. WE must name them so that We the People might be truly free.

We the People are making moves to stop the romanticizing and glorification of the vilest parts of our history and are naming it what it is, teaching what it is, fighting what it is – the sin of racism, the sin of discrimination, the sin of genocide…

There is one act, and one act only, in the history of creation that can erase any act in one’s personal history and that is the once given sacrifice God made of his son, God in the flesh, Jesus Christ. This one act atones for the actions of an individual who accepts it as true and confesses his sins. It does not change history nor the way it should be taught.

Sadly,

jj white

Tail of Tears Map

Surely Not I Lord

How can we be so sure it is not us?

During the Lord’s Super Jesus was reclining at the table with the twelve disciples when he said, “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me.” (Matthew 26:21 NIV)

The disciples were very sad and replied one after the other, “Surely not I, Lord?” (Matthew 26:22 NIV)

Jesus expanded on His prophesy saying that it would be better for the betrayer not to have been born. Judas then asked, “Surely not I, Rabbi?” (Matthew 26:25 NIV)

Look at the difference between how the eleven ask and how Judas offers the question. The eleven know Jesus is Lord while Judas still thinks him a simple Rabbi. That lack of revelation allowed Judas to betray our Lord out of greed. But, how could any of them been so sure he was not the one?

I prefer the English Standard Version translation of the question, “Is it I, Lord?” I can’t be sure enough to say ‘Surely not I.’

When things go a bit wrong or completely haywire we too often hear, “Not my fault” and then a bunch of dissemination coupled with defensive positioning and a digging in behind half-truths, outright lies, or self-deluded beliefs about one’s own actions and culpability.

What I need to do in those times is to respond with, ‘am I the one?” Then I need to react like David in Psalm 139:23-24, “²³Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. ²⁴See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (NIV)

I will rarely resolve anything by saying that it is not my fault. We will never advance God’s Kingdom with that approach – never come close to what we see for ourselves in God, or bring our vision for the church to fruition unless we hit the deck and cry out to be searched. And the first to do this need to be the leaders. Publicly. They cannot say that it’s the congregation’s fault, it’s not the pastor’s or elder’s or director’s fault. We must lead by example and be the first to hit our knees in repentance. It is the only way or it will be us that betray the Kingdom.

When we do this it clears the way for the Holy Spirit to act because God does not despise a broken and contrite heart. (Psalm 51)

So, take five or ten minutes today and pray to be searched. Read and meditate on Psalm 139 or use Psalm 51. Then, do it again tomorrow and act on what the Holy Spirit shows you.

In His grip,

jerry

Roll Back the Stone

I sat and listened to scriptures being read while friends were gathered round a campfire in front of the church. It was our Good Friday Vigil and the scriptures were followed by songs, prayers, devotional thoughts, and hope. Most assuredly, hope. A huge stone had been rolled in front of the entryway to the church – in times past one of our high school students would dress as a Roman soldier and stand guard.

I was struck with the certainty that I keep such a rock covering my heart, not to keep Jesus in as they did at his Passover burial chamber, but to keep him out. I don’t want him to know the truth of who and what I am, a sinner and full of hypocrisy. I’ve had my hypocrisy pointed out by a long lost friend recently and I take no consolation that hypocrisy crosses every line and reaches into every pigeon hole of humankind.

The stone even keeps me from truly knowing myself so that I can surrender to God’s Grace completely. The final act of grace was accomplished with Jesus’ sacrifice, the victory over sin and death sealed with his resurrection.  I can only cry out and cry out again, pray and pray again, and knock and knock again, rather - pound and pound again - at the door and beseech him to overcome the rock over my heart.

Lord help me roll away all that blocks me from being true to your word.

He rises!

In His grip,

jerry

Any Questions?

Every once in a while I wonder what questions I would ask Jesus when I find myself in His presence, as if I would have the capacity. I rather imagine that I’ll be prostrated at His feet curious as to why I’m there and to what purpose I’d been called – is this my final call and what list of charges will I be hearing at my sentencing? You know, hearing all those things I’d done that I can’t imagine Christ forgiving me for?

Still, I think about what I would ask Jesus given the chance to speak in His presence. Years ago I lost one of my best of friends to some drunk driver. The circumstances of his death baffled me. He was the only passenger of five in his car that died and the only one in it not to have a broken bone in his body. I told myself that the first thing I would ask God is why Doug had to die so young and so needlessly. Doug is the first person I led to Christ and it just didn’t seem right for him to be gone so soon after. I held on to that question in anger and anguish so tightly that it became a bitterness that divided me from my Savior. It took the prayers and laying on of hands of a bunch of junior high kids and their adult leaders to heal me of that bitterness more than 20 years after Doug was killed.

What questions do you have? I imagine they are similar to my old question – Why was this or that person taken from me? – Why was I mistreated at the hands of someone I loved and trusted? – Why do good people suffer at the hands of the evil? – Why did my friend lose all hope? - Why was my prayer unanswered and that person not healed? – and so on. I’ve had the question I talked about, all these, and more. I’m not sure I’m strong enough or wise enough to hear the answers.

Questions of faith and doctrine might rest on our hearts but I think those will fade at the sight of His glory and their importance to us vanish.

I believe it is okay to harbor questions for Jesus. Just don’t do it in anger, anger begets bitterness, bitterness separation. (The same can be said of anger toward people) Our separation from God is the very reason Jesus went to the cross and suffered on our behalf. His suffering closes the gap we’ve built, His resurrection is power enough to make mute all of the questions. Don’t hold on to your anger at unanswered questions so tightly you can’t grip the Lord’s hand when it is offered. Even when you do hold too tight, some friend, an acquaintance, a random stranger, or a group of wacky teenagers will come along and do you a kindness that loosens your grip on bitterness and allows you to breathe again. I pray that it to be so for you.

If you need to hold on to a question do so in anguish. Jesus understands anguish better and more thoroughly than anyone can imagine. It was He who said on the cross, “Father, why hast thou forsaken me?” Even though Christ knew the answer He asked it in His darkest hour. In the Lord’s deep understanding of your anguish you will be comforted.

What questions do you have for God? Ponder them for a bit, let the ones go that are too troublesome to your walk with Him, and hold lightly those you have in anguish. Peace.

In His grip,

jerry

A Call to Prayer for LCPC VBS 2017 – Week 4

It's all about the children, God's children

Passport to Peru

This week we focus our prayers at a critical juncture in the lives of the children. We first asked God to give the children understanding of Him as a shepherd and followed that up by asking God for the kids to trust in His timing in their lives. Last week we focused our prayers so that the children know that Jesus is all powerful. This week we tune our prayers to the finer focus that will lead to discipleship allowing us to fulfill the command to make disciples. We pray this week that the children will trust Jesus as their Savior and begin to understand the sacrifice He made for us.

It is a big step coming to this understanding and in it we have to perceive our personal need for salvation and our separation from God without it. Please pray for our children to gain that understanding and for our teachers and volunteers to have the Holy Spirit present in our lessons and interactions throughout the week.

The Thursday scripture and point for VBS week is that God gives us love. We see this in I Corinthians 13:13:

“¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of theses is love.”

Our story for Thursday to show God’s love is the death and resurrection of Jesus. Luke, chapters 22 through 24 are used for reference.

As they should be, these are the most sobering moments in history. During this week's Men’s Group reading of John MacArthur’s ‘One Perfect Life’ we found ourselves reading section 193 – The Final Three Hours on the Cross. MacArthur boiled down the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and concentrated them into three short paragraphs. The weight and import of them was almost too much for me to bear

Jesus was utterly forsaken by the Father and was alone on the cross. To know the depth of his love for me at that moment is unfathomable. He willingly took that place. At any point in time Jesus could have taken up his divinity and come down from the cross. But He did not and completed the greatest example of sacrificing his life for his friends.

Greater love has no man than he sacrifice his life for his friends. (John 13:13)

Please pray. Pray for this message to be so written on our hearts that it is the first and foremost thing people see in us and know us by.

In His grip

jerry

It should be clear by now that I just think these goes are cool looking.

Blood On My Hands

/w permission from Graphicstock.com

Matthew 26:27 - 29 “²⁷Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you.²⁸This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. ²⁹I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

I had finished my part in the service of Communion having carried the bread to believers who could not walk to the front for one reason or another, they were; infirm, working the sound board, in the Bawl Room with little ones, or playing their instruments as background while the ambulatory amongst the congregation came forward to be served. Andy offered me the bread and I broke a piece off hearing his words, “the body of Christ, broken for you.” Greg followed up with the cup and the words, “the blood of Christ, shed for you.”

When I took the bread and dipped it in the cup to complete the intinction some dripped on my hand. I nearly froze as the analogy washed over me like the waterfall of a high mountain stream. I was shocked and saddened and incredibly thankful. I had blood on my hands, the blood of Christ.

I am the reason he went to the cross. It’s my fault that the King of Kings stood before a corrupt court and suffered indignation, insults, and false accusations. He was beaten for me, stood in my place and took the whip. He trudged up the hill dragging the cross while his people rejected him, reviled him, and turned their backs on him. He did all of this on account of me, so that I could draw near to the Father without being destroyed, so that I might be able to be in communion with the great Jehovah. So that I might serve the King of Kings as He is meant to be served.

I didn’t dip the bread and take the communion to myself alone. The cup is filled by the pouring out “for many for the forgiveness of sins”. All who dipped that day with me and repented were forgiven, washed clean and were made able to stand in His presence. We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) and, thank God, we have the sacrifice made available to us always.

So come to the table to eat and drink. Busy? Infirm? Beckon the servers to bring the communion to you and partake because, “²⁶For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (I Corinthians 11: 26).

In His grip, jerry