Just For Me

Sorry, server's been down this morning so I'm late posting...Ginny & I plan to take a couple of days off so, unless I have something worth saying, I doubt if I'll post again till next Tuesday -- jwc.

Here's what I had for this morning:

Back in the mid 1980s, I wrote some things that embarrass me now.

I ran across such a piece yesterday. I’d forgotten that I wrote it … I mean, I remember that I wrote on the subject (my mind is not that far gone), but I’d forgotten what I said about it.

Does that make any sense?

Back in the mid ‘80s I wrote a bunch of magazine articles about Christians whose lives inspired me. I collected these pieces into a book which was published by InterVarsity Press in 1990 under the title People Whose Faith Got Them Into Trouble. Although this collective biography was translated into a few foreign languages and was broadcast as a radio series, it pretty much disappeared without a ripple.

It went out of print and a bunch of copies were pulped because I could not afford to buy them at the time.

That hurt.

Several editors at IVP asked me to write another book, one about knowing and following the will of God. They gave me a small cash advance to do the work. I started the project… but some life problems steamrolled me. Depression overwhelmed me. I could not write anything. Although the editors and publishers extended my deadlines several times, and although I accumulated reams of notes, I just could not finish that book. I defaulted on the contract and they generously forgave my debt so I did not have to pay back the advance.

The whole experience wilted me.

For a couple of years I wrote nothing but my personal journal.

Last January when my son Donald encouraged me to attempt this print-on-demand business, Bluefish Books, I thought that reissuing my collective biography, People Whose Faith…, would be an easy task. So I began scanning text and writing a few new chapters. That’s the project I’ve been editing this past week.

I’ve approached the task as a hurdle, anxious to get it over and done with, just words to plough through. Text to edit. Pages to scan. Computer formatting problems to solve. Spacing to adjust…

I had forgotten why I wrote this book in the first place.

Yesterday I’d worked my way up to the chapter on Mary Slessor, a Scottish Presbyterian lass who changed the face of Africa. She was one tough lady. I mean if Indiana Jones ran into her, he’d step aside, go sit in a corner and suck his thumb.

She escaped from an abusive drunken father, became a factory girl in a textile mill, served as a missionary in Africa, and was honored by the King of England, becoming Lady Slessor. She once beat off a charging hippo by banging it on the nose with a metal dishpan.

But those aren’t the important things about her.

The thing that astounds me, the thing I’d forgotten, the reason I’d chosen to write about her back in the ‘80s is her passion for Christ. Her letters and diaries reveal a single-minded dedication to the Savior. Her vision of Christ, high and lifted up, generates such fervor, such a grasp of reality, such an intensity – that her life make me ashamed of my own wallowing in self-pity and seeking after comfort.

Yesterday as I read over what I’d written all those years ago, my own words mad me ashamed of my own lukewarm spirit and my petty desire for a comfortable life. I realized that I’ve put Christ on a back burner while I devote my energies to more important things like getting my books out and watching NFL playoffs.

I had forgotten, but yesterday the chapter I wrote about Mary Slessor reminded me that I must life and write first of all for the benefit of my own soul, if anyone else reads my stuff, well and good. But if my life and work springs from something less than gratitude to Christ for who He is and what He’s done, then who needs it?

Physician, heal thyself. If I am to inspire others, then I myself must first be inspired … I’d lost sight of that.