I am constantly surprised friends continue to check this blog even when I abandon it for months at a time! So, thanks.
There’s been a lack of time and no keyboard-attached computer device for a long time, so I waited it out until I couldn’t anymore, then I bought what I needed and stayed up far too late into the night to eagerly return to the blank screen.
I’ve been thinking about writing about my schooling experience, teaching, and what I am up to now I’ve passed through another season of work and rest. Words are important—so important! But in a world where words are overused and watered down and reinvented—well, I didn’t feel it did much good to add to the noise.
The more I’m away from noise, the more I like it and it takes awhile to regain the nerve and grit to re-enter the scene. But a person with Truth must speak It, both for the hearer and for the goodness of the message. This is why I’m compelled to write.
I always shuddered at the evangelical trope of “door-knocking” as a girl. I think I have mentioned this before—and I would still almost rather swallow a bird (that sounds much nicer than “stab my eyeballs”) than make uninvited, potentially unwelcome small talk about Jesus with a stranger in the place they feel safest.
Jesus always postured his conversations with, “are you willing?”
I think we ought to do the same.
However, I am also the girl who just made a quick trip across states on American Airlines and definitely had a heart-to-heart with a fisherman on marriage, all my failings, and how God rescued and redeemed me to His glory. His first marriage had been abusive—he said he’d tolerated it till he was a shell of a man. Then he realized his life was no life at all and with the help of his parents, he escaped.
We both marveled at what twenty years and Jesus can do in a person’s life.
I like to think the fisherman was “willing” even though I had him cornered into a window seat and he was clearly terrified of flying. The flight ended with an invitation to go hog hunting on his property in Georgia, so I feel that overall things went well. Ha!
This little post is making me think of the most recent church sermons I’ve attended where the preacher goes on and on about theology and neglects the story/point in order to gratify his need for authority over the matter. So I will stop.
And I will write again soon.
