Is your experience is like mine? Do some consider your writing
a sort of escape, a hiding place, a monastic cell—looking and commenting, but
not really doing anything? “Why do you do this?” someone asked me once, with a get yourself a real job tone.
I suppose, looking from outside, writing can seem like that.
Surely, it’s for discretionary time; a hobby to be wrapped around the urgent or
important. Explanations are simply excuses. Writing is a sort of deferred hope,
a refusal to live here and now. In an instant culture, preparing for the long
haul is tedious, unnecessary when there is so much need now.
And don’t claim writing is a call from God. That makes Him
the excuse for distraction from real work; worse, for laziness. Of course, most
of us do perceive it as a call from God, frequently powered by a drive that
nothing else will satisfy. Yet, legitimate as these reasons may be, they are
insufficient.
Many have drive, often for destructive impulses. We need a
passion, not just for pen and print, but also a passion for purpose. From
reading this column, I doubt any here write passionately for money—although
covering expenses, or making a living, are responsible by-products.
Beyond that: Why do you or I write?
If words transmit ideas, then words on paper should equally number
those spoken. But writing is speaking to the future. Spoken words die on the
wafting air, but words on media live somewhere to the end of time. If the
speaker deserves adulation, the writer more so.
Our first book, not originally for publication, was a legacy
of marriage for our children and grandchildren on our fiftieth wedding
anniversary. Even after its publication, later writings were also primarily for
our growing number of descendants.
The quarterback does not throw the ball to where the catcher
is, but to where the catcher will be when the ball arrives. Similarly, we write
for a future need, not necessarily a felt need in the present. Writing is a way
of reaching beyond our lifetime to future generations.
Especially, it projects the grace and glory of God that we
have experienced into the future. There, we can share the full life God gave us
with those who follow.
