It’s important to surround yourself with good people, interesting people, young people, young ideas. Go places, learn new stuff. Look at the world with wonder – don’t be tired about it. ~ Angela Bassett
Welcome to the first blog post of a new series. In truth, this series is more than creative words and ideas written for blog content. This is vision casting for what I see taking place in 2019. You will find this statement repeatedly on my website: What could God do with a company of writers committed to bringing change through their creative gift? Truly, this is the prayer of my heart – that Father would take the gifts he entrusted to me and use them to bring light to others.
I’m not sure if this is even a recognized English word, but I ran across it several months ago and the complexity of the meaning affected me deeply:
the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk. ~ Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
How many of my fellow writers have ever sat in a coffee shop and listened to all the stories being told around you? You’ve been engrossed in your writing project, but as you reach out to sip the coffee you have allowed to get cold, a conversation catches your attention. Maybe you hear pain in someone’s voice, or laughter erupts from across the room. You weren’t trying to eavesdrop (or maybe you were), but something about the life experience taking place on the other side of the room was highlighted to you.
We have been taught to disengage in what is going on around us – to simply be spectators that allow others their privacy. But loneliness and isolation are also on the rise in our society. Fear of one another seems to be increasing as the political schizophrenia of our nation stirs our distrust. It seems easier to stay home and live vicariously through Netflix – safe and sound, right?
Except, I am not afraid of people. You know what I am afraid of? – not loving people the way God has called me to love. Have I been deeply hurt by people? – yes. Have I had seasons of having to gain perspective and healing in order to entrust myself to others? – yes. But I have also met amazing people that have enriched my life in untold ways. It’s those untold stories that will fill the pages of this blog series. Not only do I have a lifetime of stories that need to be told, there are stories yet to be discovered.
I believe there is a particular kind of writer that God is raising up. You have been hidden in God’s quiver for some time. He has been fashioning you for a purpose. It has seemed to you to be nothing but trial and heartbreak, but truly it has been the crucible that has shaped you into the arrow needed to hit your God-designed target. You know what it is like to lose your voice. To not be heard. To not be seen. To be devalued and discarded. And because of the process that Father allowed in your life – you see with clarity those that need to be seen.
I have heard it said that we all have a question to answer with our lives and that we are all on a journey to know what that question is. I think it is simply this, “We comfort with the comfort we have been given.” Do you remember all the questions you had before the needed comfort in your life came? Someone else is asking those same questions. What if we as Kingdom scribes not only asked the questions but allowed God to answer them through our gifts.
What if we gave a voice to the voiceless? What if we brought light into darkened places? What if we told the stories that need to be told? Those stories that have been written on the pages of our own life experiences – and those that are highlighted to us as we sip our cold coffee while we connect with the people around us.
Hey prophetic writer, if you feel as though you are being readied to launch from God’s bow and are looking for a community of other like-minded arrows, email me and let’s talk.
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