On Writing A Significant Book

This illuminated manuscript from Medieval times shows evil King Manasseh and other literary critics sawing the Prophet Isaiah in half. They did not care for the book he wrote. They used a wooden saw with blunt teeth. He was alive, up to a point, while they did it.

Wednesday my friend Barbara came over for breakfast at Dave’s Diner and conversation. She lives in a retirement community where last week one couple celebrated their 65^th wedding anniversary.

At the banquette someone told a joke that Barbara is too much of a lady to post on her blog… So naturally I’ll tell it here:

This old man and old woman decided to get married and talked over the logistical arrangements.
“Will you move into my place or do I move in with you” he asked.
“I’ll move in with you because your place is bigger,” she said.
“What about our children?”
“We can spent Thanksgiving with yours and Christmas with mine,” she said.
“How do you feel about sex?” he asked.
“I like it infrequently,” she said.
He pondered that answer for a moment then asked, “Is that one word, or two”?

Barbara and I talked catching up for about four hours.

“Discontent,” she said characterizes her life at the moment. She spend much of her time driving her grown daughter back and forth to chemotherapy and radiation treatments for small cell lung cancer.

She said that the word discontent had come to mind as she prayed driving over to meet me. “Once you’ve actually put a name to a sin,” she said, “It’s harder to ignore it”.

The Bible uses words like mumbling, muttering or grumbling to describe our feelings of discontent.

“It’s like my telling God that I don’t think He’s treating me as I deserve,” I said. “To which He says, ‘That’s ok, John. I can fix that in a jiffy”.

Barbara was religion editor at the newspaper where I worked as a mail clerk; we’ve been friends for over 20 years. Her Along The Way column was one of the newspaper’s most popular features attracting thousands of readers each week.

We talked a bit about the Greek phrases in the Ward Diary that Wes has been helping me decipher.

As we sipped coffee, I expressed some of my own discontent, primarily about the poor sales of my books. I do so want to write important things, books that will be widely read. Significant books. Books that will honor Christ and give people hope.

“John, it’s ok to be insignificant,” Barbara said. “There’s nothing wrong with being insignificant. In the eyes of the world, most of God’s dearest saints are insignificant people. That’s not what counts”.

We returned to my house to sit in the garden and continue talking. A huge pine snake, a good five or six feel long, crept out of the bromeliad bed and I tried to catch it to show Barbara, but the beautiful creature eluded me.

Our conversation turned to our Christian witness and conversion.

Barbara brought up several points she’d heard and thought about recently concerning Isaiah’s vision of God:

“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple… and the house was filled with smoke,” the Prophet said.

This is Revelation. God reveals Himself to each person in a different way.

I have never had a vision; God drew my attention to Himself through the life of a missionary I met at work in a library and by my reading the Bible.

Few people see visions. Most of us are touched by God through contact with Christians, a line of poetry, a verse of Scripture, a strain of music, a death, a crisis of despair, a passing thought. Brother Lawrence became aware of God when he saw a leafless tree in winter and remembered how it would turn green and flourish in Spring.

But God reveals Himself to each person in a way suitable and tailor made to that person.

The Prophet said, “Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips… For I have seen the King, the Lord of hosts,”

Revelation births recognition.

We catch a glimpse of who God is… and we begin to see who and what I am.

This is not nice.

Our dis-ease comes, not necessarily from remembering things we have done, but from recognizing what we are. Our individualized revelation of God condemns us as we recognize that He is pure beauty and we have hardly given Him a thought, running our own lives as though I personally am the one high and lifted up.

This recognition can lead to repentance or rejection.

God is a gentleman.

He does not rape anybody.

He gives each of us a chance, but, if we chose not to give Him another thought, He respects our choice.

That’s a glory… and a horror.

As Isaiah grew aghast at what he discovered about himself, immediately God sent one of the seraphim, a kind of super-angel, in the vision to the altar to bring a burning coal.

“He laid it upon my mouth and said, ‘Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged’”.

The Prophet found Redemption linked to Revelation, Recognition and Repentance. Immediate redemption. Specific redemption.

The burning coal, which even an angel had to handle with tongs, was not placed on his feet but on his mouth, the place Isaiah saw as his point of need.

Then guess what?

“I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’”

As the Prophet responded, he began to hear God’s voice.

I suspect that the reason I’m dense to God’s voice is my sluggish response.

The world says, “God? What God? I don’t hear any God?’

The world is being honest. It does not hear. There’s a reason for that.

As he overheard the voice of God — and notice that God was not specifically speaking to Isaiah but asking the general question, “Whom shall I send…” —

Hearing this, like an eager student in a class, Isaiah jumped up and down waving his hands and yelled, “Here am I, send me!”

God did not shove the man into being something he did not want to be; but on beholding the glory of the Lord, Isaiah felt old things melt away and flake off. He became God’s man. He followed the Lord… and incidentally, as a by-product of that, ended up writing one of the most significant books in human history.

After Barbara went home, I noticed algae beginning to form along the fringe of our swimming pool; so I spent the afternoon changing the filter, vacuuming the bottom, adding chlorine…and thinking.

Humm…

What did that illuminated manuscript I started out with show?

Am I really willing to live and write a significant book, or do I just want to pipedream and fanaticize about being a rich and famous writer?

Among the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeologists found a copy of Isaiah’s book which is virtually word for word the same text you can read in your own Bible; his account of his vision of God can be found in the sixth chapter.