As I do when listening, my hand cups my chin while my index finger sticks straight up across my mouth and rests to the side of my nose. I’m doing a pretty good job of staying focused on today’s sermon by only being mildly distracted by the fussy toddler sitting in the pew in front of my family and I. The toddler apparently doesn’t find the Epiphany service as interesting as I do, or as I should at least. She squirms and cries out to be released from her parents embrace, eventually claiming a small victory as her mother takes her from the sanctuary. In comparison, to my delight, my kids are sitting quietly even if they might not be paying that close of attention as they doodle on this Sunday’s bulletin.
Rev Dr Pastor Tom Carver is starting a sermon series today on “The Power of Words” and the impact they have on relationships and the world. This Sunday’s topic is using words to create. My wife knows I’ve been kicking around the idea of blogging in conjunction with my current endeavor of trying my hand at short fiction, and I have to give her credit for listening to the Holy Spirit better than I was today. Just before we started Communion, Pastor Tom proposed the question to the congregation,
“How are you going to use your words this year?”
and she elbowed me (gently) in the side. Now as married couples do, I somehow knew everything she was trying to convey with that elbow and I smiled at the realization she had received, and emparted over to me, and mouthed the words “I know” back to her.
I’ve grown much better in the last few years at listening to what God is trying to tell me and going with His flow, so here I am, writing my first blog post. I want to answer Pastor Tom’s question with an active participation of using my words to be the city on a hill I feel like I’m called to be.
I’ve become a searcher of finding God in everyday life, finding him in the unconventional, and finding him in the surprising. I look for the writer, artist, or musician who creates masterful works of art and acknowledge (or don’t) that it comes from something beyond them. I’m not talking about the people who you’ll find their works with the adjective of “Chrisitian” before the art, like Chrisitan Music, Chrisitan Fiction, etc. I’m talking about the ones who you may never know share a love of Christ like you and me, yet they create things that are beyond the adjective.
So as I start this journey of blogging, I want you to understand what I’m looking for even if I don’t explicitly point it out in every entry. I’m looking for God’s love working in this world. I love all things nerdy, geeky, and dorky, so those will probably be a lot of the things I discuss and I find the idea of finding God in the areas that many assume to be very secular extremely exciting. I personally have been finding him there all my life.
I started the endeavor earlier by carrying around a small blue notebook as I make a better attempt to record my random thoughts and ideas, both for the blog and for my short fiction. Now I move on to producing those scribbled down ideas into something people will hopefully want to read. My tea is hot, delicious, and full of inspiration tonight, so let’s give this blogging thing a try why don’t we?
