Lent Day 18 – Nothing New Under the Sun

I’ve been working on a book for about a year now. I’ve sat with the idea for quite a while. This writing project has brought a lot of my inner voices to the surface. There are voices of excitement, energy and movement as I work out stories, truths and experiences on pages. There are also those very pesky ol’ voices of self-doubt, discouragement and frustration. Some days I’m stuck, some days I’m inspired, some days I’m just too busy to care. Today was an “I’m-too-late-to-the-party" day.

The book has started out, like all my writing projects, working out my thoughts, truth, hopes and story in the world. The book is about an adventure, a passage and a prayer of love that has changed everything for me. I'm working through ancient texts about a love-struck father and his two lost sons (Luke 15: 11-32), a wedding passage built for living a life of love (I Cor. 13) and a prayer to remain continually connected to the Source of love (Eph 3:14-21). This project was birthed from the seemingly insurmountable personal pains and challenges of my life that have continually and remarkably been transformed by love, or Divine Love. It is not a new topic or issue dreamed up last month in Silicon Valley. It has been with us, and eluded us, since the dawn of humanity. However, as the book has progressed, excruciatingly slowly, I’ve thought about publishing and entering into the crowded and noisy space of all the other books being put out there. There are a lot! My driving motivation for the project is to close the gap between a belief in a God and life of love and the actual experience of that love. Again, nothing new, but I believe it’s wildly important.

There are writers throughout the centuries who have addressed Divine love. Throughout my life writers like Henri Nowen and Brennan Manning have greatly impacted me along the path of God’s love. More recently, writers like Richard Rohr and Ann Voskamp have captivated me. Also, I’ve really loved, Tim Keller's Prodigal God and Bob Goff’s, Love Does. I'm waiting for Maria Goff’s, Love Lives Here to arrive in the mail. Yesterday, I was reading Mike Foster’s, People of the Second Chance. It’s a super good book on living out God-like love. And, it really frustrated me. It didn’t frustrate me because of the content. Like I said, I couldn’t recommend it enough. Go out a buy it! It wrecked me because it burst my bubble of writing something novel and profound in a unique space. Mike Foster beat me to it. As I read more and more, I realized that I wasn’t occupying a unique space anymore. The spot was filled. No room at the Inn for my book. To add insult to injury, he is doing really, really cool things in the world. My dad used to say when he felt like he was missing out on life, “a dollar short and a day late.” Yep, that sums it up for me.

In my time seeking God I was reminded that His message and life of love are painfully missing is a lot of people’s lives, including some areas of my own. So, I need to keep going. I need to finish the book and let it be what it is. Mostly, I was reminded that the project was written to more clearly understand the incredible difference God’s tenacious love has made in my life. A life marked with deep pain and deep redemption. My place in the world isn’t as a renowned author (I don’t have anything published) or speaker or _______… My place in the word is His beloved. Instead of feelings of envy or defeat about Mike Foster I began to feel a kinship and an excitement that there is a movement of God’s love bigger than me and being worked out with remarkable and gifted people like Mike. I’m praying more people read People of the Second Chance and live out its content. I’m praying I will continue to try to live out its content. “There is nothing new under the sun,” as the wisdom of Ecclesiastes tells me. But, there is ancient truths that needs to be retold as many times as possible. God’s love is one of them. I hope to tell it with my writing. Way more importantly, I hope to tell it with my life and I shouldn’t let my desire for personal novelty and profundity get in the way!