We Are In This Together by Alan Anderson

 ^“In the presence of God who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ…”—First Timothy 6: 13-14 (RSV).

My philosophy regarding my writing echoes my philosophy of care when I was in pastoral and chaplaincy work. It is to encourage people as we journey through life together in spite of hardship, sorrow or disappointment in the times we live in. Even in a secular culture like Canada the apostle Paul’s charge to the younger minister holds true. “…I charge you to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ…”

In being called to be writers we can encourage each other to persevere in whatever area of writing we are involved in. This encouragement, of course, can also be giving to other creatives. We must never give up.

I see Pontius Pilate as representing the secular mindset of when Jesus lived. This mindset also matches the growing and lost secularism of our day. The truth of God is alive and well but most people reject it. Pontius Pilate had the Truth before him yet rejected it.

I love my fellow writers. I have been encouraged by many writers especially those of the InScribe writer family. In turn I want to encourage and spur them on. I know if it wasn’t for the blessing of other writers my words might not come to fruition. We need each other.

I experienced a sense of sadness when I read Ruth Snyder’s final message as InScribe President. She has been President, I believe, since I joined InScribe a few years ago. I sincerely appreciate in her final message as President she encouraged us to spur each other on (FellowScript, Summer 2018 edition).

Ruth’s encouragement reminds me we may be more effective in bringing a message of hope if we realize we are not alone in our craft. We are even more determined to influence our society due to the power of encouraging other writers. In this realization we know our writing has meaning and purpose.

Perhaps as you read this post you are in need of encouragement. You sit in front of your computer to write and words are slow to come. The ones you put on to a page lack meaning and are weak. You get up from your computer and look out a window in hope of giving your mind a rest. This effort to write is all devoid of joy and you are downhearted. I imagine many of us experience this from time to time.

My tendency is to be a loner when I create a story. Perhaps this is due to being an introvert by nature. I’m not shy but I am an introvert. I’m at a point in my life where I enjoy sharing my work with other writers to critique. It’s worth it in the long run and it spurs me on.

I love to encourage other writers. It is a privilege to encourage another writer when I’m asked to critique a work in progress. Is this a joy to you as well my reader friend? What a privilege it is to be a writer.

Secularism may be the call of today but it is also a time when we as writers who are Christian continue to bring stories, articles, and messages of abiding hope to people. Let us not be shaken by the darkness and negativity so prevalent in a society searching for meaning and purpose. Let our writing be pleasing, unstained and free from reproach all in the name of the One we serve. We are in this life together and we are not alone.

https://scarredjoy.ca/

Behind the Words by Bryan Norford

I’ve always been fascinated by the ability to use language to express an idea in various ways. Before I became interested in writing as an author, I was involved in preparing technical and professional documents. I found language could be used to produce authentic sounding documents (whether or not they were authentic!) by the use of words that had not only a dictionary meaning, but also carried inferences understood by the culture—professional or communal.

A couple of examples come to mind. The expression “that’s unacceptable,” seems to carry authority beyond personal opinion. Also the word “discriminate” has lost its discriminatory ability because advocacy groups for human rights commandeered it to connote their agenda. I’m sure you can think of others.

Obviously, this has implications for both fiction and non-fiction writers. Authentic writing depends not only use of the right word and ruthless deletion of unnecessary words, but also on word order. Strunk and White admirably demonstrate this by rearranging Thomas Paine’s sentence: “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Other arrangements they suggest don’t carry the same emotional impact, but the reason is hard to define:

Times like these try men’s’ souls.

How trying it is to live in these times.

These are trying times for men’s souls

Soulwise, these are trying times.

This is where craftsmanship and art combine in the classics that we admire, but which deflate our own confidence. We doubt we will ever reach such sublime heights, yet we are continually constrained to try. Such is the nature of writing. Like life, perfection is seductive; its empty promise will never stop us trying, but always leaves us lamenting our poverty.

But we are fortunate to write in English. English and the other Germanic languages are descendants of Greek (recall the expression: “The Greeks had a word for it”?). So English has a wealth of words few other languages on earth can boast, providing every nuance necessary for effective, accurate writing. Would my passion for writing have been as dynamic without the English language? Possibly not.

However, the biblical languages have certainly enhanced it. A common response to even an elementary knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, is that it opens up the Scriptures afresh. In the Old Testament, for instance, the Hebrew faith formed part of the everyday Hebrew language. Thus, it was not possible to differentiate physical life from the spiritual. The connotations of God’s love and faithfulness were in every expression of love and faithfulness between humans.

In the New Testament, the Greek language had every word necessary to transmit the Christian faith. What is even more remarkable, the Holy Spirit used the “Dick and Jane” Greek of John’s Gospel to communicate sublime truths of the faith as effectively as the classic Greek used by the author of Hebrews. Furthermore, Paul took words from the Greek language and infused them with Christian truth providing “crossover” meanings to aid evangelism in his day.

If I have understood the depth of God’s love and actions for me in procuring salvation, it has been the meaning built in to various words critical to the Christian faith. The Australian theologian, Leon Morris, in his book, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, researched the words: redemption, covenant, blood, propitiation, reconciliation and justification from the original languages. His work gave me a depth of understanding that drew me into a clearer and deeper permanency of my relationship to Jesus Christ, and greater assurance of my eternal security in God’s provision.

It is no accident that God has communicated to us by the written word. Not only does it provide a permanent record of God’s care for His people, it does so in a way that is relevant to every generation. His gift of writing for me and those He called into this ministry is simply an extension of His desire to communicate His love beyond ourselves.