In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Familiar words, right? We’ve all read those verses a million times. I was pretty sure I’d examined them from every possible perspective. But last time I read them, a new little seed of inspiration was planted that I’ve been keeping an eye on. ?

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I’m a writer (which you obviously know). I love words. I love philosophizing about them. I love making art with them. I love harnessing them to express Truth and Light. And I LOVE when God talks about them–and about their power. Power which John 1:3 states in a way that sheds new light on the nature of those words I so love.

In Genesis, God SPOKE the world into existence. “And God said, ‘Let there be…'” Here in John, Jesus IS that Word through which all things were made. Have those two pieces clicked in your mind before? I can’t believe it took this long for them to click for me, LOL. That our Savior is the thing by which and through which creation happens. And THAT is why John calls him the Word. (To which my husband said, “Well yeah…” proving that I’m definitely late to this epiphany, LOL. But I’m going to keep talking about it anyway.)

So what does that say about the true power of words?

Words are the creative force. It is through words that things happen. 

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I need to think about that for a minute. I use words for a living–I create a lot with them. Whole worlds, one might argue…but imaginary ones. When it comes to actual building, I guess I always thought that the ACTIONS were the more important thing. The other day my husband and son were building a desk together from some scrap wood (a.k.a. an old bookshelf that had collapsed, LOL), and if you ask me what effected the creation, I’d say “screws, wood, and a screwdriver.”

But do you know what else I noticed while they were building? The words exchanged. This is the first real building project they’ve done together, and I loved hearing the instructions float out to me in the kitchen. “Now this is how you do this…” my husband would say. And, “How do you want this part?”

Then would come my son’s answer. “Yeah, that looks good. Let’s put this piece here…”

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A simple exchange between a very earthly father and son who were repurposing something already made. The desk could have been built without those, right?

Maybe…because they are a very earthly, physical, corporeal father and son. The Father and Son, on the other hand, at the brink of our creation…they’re something different. They are, the Bible tells us, Spirit. That’s why it was such a miracle that Jesus wrapped himself in flesh and became one of us.

Pure Spirit doesn’t have hands like we do, or like we’d recognize. Pure Spirit certainly doesn’t have (or need) an electric screwdriver or cheap particle board. Pure Spirit does not interact with this physical world as we physical beings do. How does it?

Through words.

Let that sink in–I know I am. How did God create? With words. How did God interact with man from the dawn of time through each of the prophets? With words. What did God-Made-Man do when he began his ministry? Teaching and preaching–WORDS. Yes, he healed too. I know he did. And how did he often choose to heal? With words. Sometimes he touched, yes. But did he have to? I’m reminded of what that faithful centurion said in Luke 7:7. “But say the word, and my servant will be healed.“

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The fact that God shared these with us–gifted them to us and then exchanged them with us…that’s pretty amazing. More, it’s not only a gift, it’s a responsibility.

He gave us the very tools of creation. And what are we doing with them? How often do we use them to tear each other down instead of build each other up? To complain instead of praise? How often are our words careless, thoughtless, unbridled?

What might change in our lives if we could see what each of our words did, like we can see what God’s words do? We’d see the harm that thoughtless verbal jab really did to our coworker or spouse or child. We’d see what worlds were built in them instead when we instruct or praise or encourage. And I have a feeling what we chose to say would be very different.

Well, my friends, our physical eyes may not be able to see it–but it’s no less real for that. So perhaps our new prayer ought to be, “Lord, open our spiritual eyes, so that we might see the true power of our words…and use them for You.”

‘Tis the season for snow here in America (or at least the more northern parts of it), and so I thought it would be a great time to share a devotional that one of my characters wrote. 😉 These are the words of LuAnn Sherrill from the Secrets of Wayfarers Inn #20, There’s No Place Like Holmes. Which just released, so I thought it would be a great time to share.

In the story, there had just been a big snow storm, which had LuAnn waxing philosophical. In reality, I wrote this on my writing retreat last April. 😉 It isn’t all that long, but hopefully it’s something that will speak to you in these bleak, cold days of winter…especially when the white stuff is falling.

***

This morning, not surprisingly, I was thinking about snow. I was
thinking about how the blood of the Lamb makes us as white and pure as those
drifts outside. But as I studied our world, I realized it was a lot more than
that. Think about the world you see when you look out the window after a fresh snow.

It isn’t just white. Snow covers things. It hides them, just as we are
hidden in the wings of our Lord. Snow rounds the edges, just as our God will round
ours, if we let Him. Snow has this remarkable ability to become all we see, just
as our Savior fills our vision.

Snow can be a powerful, driving force. But one flake… One flake is nothing, in one sense. It has no power on its own. But it
has infinite beauty. When we look at a snowflake, we see the laws that the
Creator put into effect, we see the patterns He set in motion. 

And we, my
friends, are the same. We are the possessors of infinite beauty. We are made,
each one of us, in His image…yet each one, like a crystal of snow, is different.
Because He is infinite, while we are finite. He is the atmosphere to our single
flake.

But one of the most amazing things He did for us was to set us with
other snowflakes. We see what effect a snowstorm, a blizzard, can have. And the
same is true of His children. Alone, we may be so small that sometimes we think
we go unseen. But we’re part of something. Part of a driving force. And
together, we can work miracles. We can turn a plain into a mountain.

And we can turn a mountain into a cloud. We have only to play out our
role in His story. 

Dear Lord, thank You for filling us. Thank You for filling our hearts every day that we let You in.
Thank You for giving us the fellowship of friends. Of family. Bless each one reading this, Father, and draw us all closer to You. Soothe hurting hearts and speak
truth to our spirits. Fill our conversations through with Your Truth. Amen. 

PROMISE.

That was my word for 2019. As I blogged about it way back in the first week of January, I said I’d keep an eye out for how God’s promise would play out in my life this year.

Confession: I really didn’t.

In fact, I didn’t even remember that it was my word of the year. I had to look it up on the blog to remind myself a few weeks ago, and I felt quite the mental slap to realize I had a word so, well, promising and didn’t cling to it.

But as I reviewed the post, the scriptures I’d included in it, the thoughts I’d had at the time…it’s okay that I forgot. In fact, it totally fits with the whole purpose of the word as it was given to me. Because the thing that struck me then and which struck me anew as I read my words from a year ago is this:

It’s when we think God has forgotten His promise to us that He’s fulfilling it.

It’s been a difficult year. I finished up the last books of the 6-due-in-18-months schedule I’d been on, and I was seriously exhausted by the end of it. (Hence why I spent three weeks in November frantically rewriting the last of those books, which certainly told the tale of exhaustion, LOL.) My daughter began high school, which in homeschooling world means a bit more intensity for me in terms of grade-and-record-keeping. And my husband is changing careers, which comes with some stress…okay, a lot of stress.

But with the PROMISE of Joy. Something I need to remember now. And cling to. 

Something I need to examine. I sent my blog post from Jan 1 to my husband a few weeks ago, and he asked, “But what exactly IS the promise God has given us?”

He never promises us smooth sailing. He never promises us career success. He never promises us fame or acclaim or anything the world deems “good.” So what is at the heart of His promise?

I will never leave you or forsake you.

Through you all the nations of the world will be blessed.

Seek first the kingdom of God and the rest will be added.

His presence is, ultimately, our promise. Things will go wrong–but He’ll be there. If we keep our focus on Him, nothing else will matter–and we’ll spread the good news of him to everyone else.

A week before Christmas, my family started reading a book together morning and night called Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals (there’s a free app for smart phones too that has the exact same stuff in it!). It takes the traditional prayers of the church, both Catholic and Protestant, and combines them into one volume meant to connect us with other Christians around the world and throughout history; to be approachable to different denominations and backgrounds and help us seek unity with one another through our shared roots. The authors explain in the introduction that these sorts of prayers can be used to hide in…but they can also be used to teach us about the form of prayer and to be a wonderful jumping-off place for our more personal ones. There’s a place in each session where you pause to pray for what’s on your list and praise God for what He’s done.

Each morning prayer ends with this, which I think is a beautiful benediction for us all as we close out a year and prepare for a new one:

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you : wherever he may send you;

may he guide you through the wilderness : protect you through the storm;

may he bring you home rejoicing: at the wonders he has shown you;

may he bring you home rejoicing : once again into our doors.

We never know where He’ll send us. The wildernesses we may go through. The storms that will come. We don’t know what the new year will bring. But we DO know that He’s there. In the whirlwind and in the whisper. We know that He does the miraculous every day, and that we ought to be looking for it, ought to be filled with wonder at the mystery that is our God. We know that when our eyes remain fixed on him, there is always Joy to be found. Always something to rejoice over.

We know that Christ is the ultimate promise fulfilled. 

A couple weeks ago, my church watched Mom’s Night Out–a rather hilarious Christian movie that we all thoroughly enjoyed. In one scene, the heroine’s little girl is drawing on the walls with markers–Mommy ends up putting frames around some of them rather than painting over them, which was adorable.

The next day, as I thought about that scene, my mind traveled back to my own days of small children and wall art. I honestly thought we’d escaped the writing-on-the-walls danger with Xoe–never did she do such a thing when she was young enough not to know better.

Then we started teaching her how to write.

For months afterward, we’d find her name scrawled on EVERYTHING. Walls. Counters. Cabinets. Dressers. Toybox. She would just walk around with a pen in her hand and put her name on absolutely any surface she found.

As I remembered those days, I smiled. Not because it was so funny at the time. But because as I thought of it, I also thought of that command God gave us–that His law should be written on our hearts.

Have you ever wondered what that should look like?

I think it looks a lot like a five-year-old with a pen in her hand and new knowledge filling her. Everything we touch, everything we see, everything we encounter should be a new opportunity for sharing that knowledge. For practicing the faith. For reveling in all He’s given us. Every blank surface should be an opportunity for showcasing how much we love Him.

If His word is written on our hearts, then we should also be scrawling His glorious name all over our lives.

Sometimes we are broken. Cracked. Chipped. Completely undone.

Sometimes, no matter how much is poured into us, it feels like it all comes leaking back out.

Sometimes life just keeps throwing rocks at us, making those chips and cracks grow.

Maybe there’s been a diagnosis–for you or someone you love. Maybe it’s the loss of a job. A home. A dream. Maybe it’s a tragedy. Or maybe it’s just a million little things all adding up. Maybe you’re running too hard. Reaching too far. Expecting too much. Maybe you’ve fallen back into that habit you’d thought you’d kicked. 

Maybe it’s any of a thousand things that leave you empty at the end of the day. Whatever it is, I think most of us have been there. Broken.

Way back in the day, when I was writing Whispers from the Shadows, my heroine Gwyneth says to the hero Thad, “I’m broken.” And his reply is one I think of time and again. He says, “Oh, sweet. We’re all broken.”

A truth we can’t always see. Because when we’re looking through a cracked lens, we sometimes blame that for the flaws we see in others. (Or sometimes we can only see their cracks and don’t realize it’s our lens.) But it’s a truth nonetheless. We all have those cracks and bruises. The pock-marks and scars. We all have holes and seams and missing pieces.

That’s why I love that our Lord is described as a potter. He knows all about these fragile vessels He’s made. He knows how easily we break. Shatter. Fall to pieces.

And He knows how to fix us. More, He knows how to take the pieces and make something new.

Lord, use us in your mosaic. Fix us where you can, filling our cracks and holes and empty places with you. And as for those times when we feel so utterly shattered that there’s no putting us back together…that’s okay too. We know, Lord, that to you it isn’t a thousand pieces of that old, broken vessel that you see. It’s a thousand pieces of a gorgeous piece of art, just waiting to be made.

We serve an artist, my friends. A God capable of taking the worst tragedy–the ones we can’t actually recover from–and using the fallout to forge something we never could have dreamed. We serve a Potter who can take that same old clay and shape something never seen before. We serve a King who never looks us and says, “You, my son, my daughter, are broken beyond repair.” He looks at us and says, “Will you let me take the pieces? I’ll make something wonderful from them.”

Let’s give Him our pieces. One by one. Maybe we’ll hurt a little as we pick them up and offer them up–some of the edges are pretty sharp. We might bleed. We might cry. But clinging to them will only make those cuts worse. Let’s offer them to Him instead. Our sacrifice. Our praise. Our trust.

Because when we’re at our worst, shattered, that’s when He’s at His best. That’s when He can really get to work…if we step back and let Him.