I love to do just what so many others in our literate world enjoy. To sit at my keyboard, or take pen and paper in hand, to record somehow those thoughts and ideas which flow through my mind. Millions of people are gifted, talented or inspired to be the ready scribe spoken of in Ezra 7:6. Throughout recorded histories men, women, boys and girls have sought to express themselves in ways that would allow others to know and understand events and times even though they were not there.
Sometimes we struggle over how to start, what to say, how to word a thing in such a way that it is understood as it is intended. At others we are amazed as thoughts transfer seamlessly from mind to page. Having begun in a single phrase an unbidden torrent takes over producing page after page requiring delightfully little editorial attention. We use the broad swath of “literary license” to portray things in provocative and suggestive ways. We often take great liberties to violate rules of text and verse just to get a thing down.
Things are written which ought not to be. Stories are told which would have been better served to have been left silent. Yet we press on. We review our output in disgust, strike it all out and begin again. We surmise and summate and sometimes wonder what we meant to say. Yet we continue toward that grand prize of being a part of the proclamation Ecclesiastes 12:12 and John 21:25. The preacher wrote there “I.” And in John is written “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.” We could profit from the admonition of these learned writers from the past. Perhaps it should cause us to wonder what the abundance of our pontifications will bring. Yet on we go.
It is thrilling to be able to look upon a phrase or a verse, a text or a book and say I wrote that! It is another kind of thrill when you stare aghast at the jumbled nonsensical thoughts on a page and moan to your soul “Oh no, I wrote that”. Yet we are in all that we are as God our Father has made us according to His good pleasure. Yes, it is true; we have made choices to get to where we are. But the scripture says “the gifts and callings of God are without repentance”. So we dare not turn back; for so we are gifted and so we are called. What a joy to know that in spite of yourself and your selfish choosing you are still usable by the creator of all things.
SMHG John
And so I leave this in hopes that I will some day reflect on the meaning.