I’m sitting in my hotel room in Cedar City, Utah, getting ready to head back to the Las Vegas Airport and home. It’s been a good weekend. I was asked to come and preach and sing at a very small Seventh-day Adventist Church in this moderate-sized town on the border between high desert and piney mountains. Yesterday we went up to Brian’s Head, an 11,000-foot peak overlooking, well, just about everything. For this Texas boy, it was great to get out of the flat and see some mountains for a change.
The people I spoke to on Sabbath were appreciative that I came, and more than once they asked if I would stay and be their pastor. They lost theirs recently. But that’s not my calling. I’m a writer, or at least I envision myself to be. Lately I haven’t been doing much writing. After a full career as a book and magazine editor, then a university professor, during which time I published several hundred articles and stories and 28 books, I retired in 2021. I thought retirement would be filled with a lot more reading and writing, but I was wrong. I don’t know what happened, but I hit a snag and ended up doing other things. Two years of retirement and I was called back to teaching, now 3/4 time.
In the recesses of my mind, I see myself writing, but instead I am working on home projects, helping my son put together short films, editing books for friends, and…traveling to other states to preach. Funny, when I preach, I often am preaching to myself. This time, my sermon was from Genesis 12, when God called Abram to leave his family and home and “go to a place that I will show you.” I compared that with Matthew 10, where Jesus says, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” The premise was that we are all Abram, and that God is calling us each to put Him first in our lives.
It’s when I think of this that I realize that God hasn’t necessarily called me to be a writer. He has called me to be His child, in whatever I choose to do. If writing fulfills me, then I can pursue that AND be a blessing to God. But if I can’t find words right now, God will find other ways to use me.
C. S. Lewis puts it this way: “The world doesn’t need more good Christian literature. The world needs more good literature written by Christians.” It’s not what you write, or even if you write. It’s how you reflect God in whatever you choose to do.
I have no doubt that what I am feeling about my writing is a lull that I will overcome. But if it isn’t, I will continue to praise God in whatever way I can.
The Great Adventure 