Crystallizing reality

Late night minutes creep by. My breathing is shallow as my eyes skip across the page, drinking in every word. Even as I finish, my brimming brain makes sleep unthinkable, so I go back to read that chapter again and be sure I understood it. At last I am satisfied, and I slap the book closed with a sigh as I do with nearly every book I finish and murmur, “Good book.”

I turn out my lamp, but an inner light burns on. Why is it that epic tales of good versus evil stir us so? Why are we so moved when we read about faithful friends willing to die for you even if they do not know why? Why does something resonate within us when we read about one person being willing to die so that others may live?

Could it be that our spirits naturally respond to “Gospel vibes” like a flower responds to sunlight? Could it be that as Ecclesiastes 3:11 puts it, God “has put eternity into man’s heart”? Like a dream long forgotten but now remembered, stories crystallize reality.

Reading has been one of the key experiences in my life that has awakened a passion in me to write. A writer like C.S. Lewis injects me with awe whenever I devour his Chronicles of Narnia or The Great Divorce because they bring Biblical truths into sharper focus. My heart thrills over Aslan coming to life again and breathing vitality into stone, or over the analogy of things on earth being like ghosts compared to the realer than real things of heaven. I need not list the effects of Frodo’s quest to destroy the Ring, or Jane Eyre’s heart-wrenching determination to hold to her convictions, or Harry Potter’s march to his death so that his friends may live, because most of us have read books like this and know what it feels like.

However, as I finished this particular novel late that night, I felt not only satisfaction but disappointment. Why? Because the book came so close to pointing to the reality of God’s Story, but the lies and poor ethics of the hero made it fall just short of hitting the mark. The story lacked uncontaminated truth to testify to its own validity.

I lay then, that night, listening. Silence reigned, only interrupted by the hoarse cry of some unknown bird in the woods outside. As I listened and sought God quietly, I remembered another time I was doing the same thing in a meeting while a godly man praying out loud asked the Lord to raise up writers in our nation who would be voices of truth. As these words fell on my ears, a penetrating thought had followed, “Maybe that is what God wants me to do.”

Nearly a year later, I was only more convinced of it. And as I considered the book I had just finished reading and this nudge in my heart, an unspeakable yearning awoke within me, a yearning to rewrite that tale as it should have been written. Not literally that same story, but one all my own. Yes, I did experience some despair because in my own strength the task seems mountainous, but I am not alone. God is beckoning me into this path, and with Him all things are possible. I may not be a genius, but I know these three things: I am passionate about God and His truth, I am passionate about art in writing, and I am passionate about seeing the world come to know truth and God Himself. Why not connect the three? If God is for it, who can stand against it? He is in the habit of turning mountains into plains.

And so although my bedside lamp was out, the light inside kept burning. My mind buzzed with questions, but my heart glowed with a newly ignited zeal: the zeal to write and point others to the truth of Jesus. And maybe, just maybe, they will be stirred to let Him into their lives as well.

Below is a picture I took to encapsulate the vision God has given me. The nail represents Christ’s redeeming sacrifice on the cross; without it, I would have no real purpose or message. The lion signifies Aslan as one of many ways Christ’s character can be revealed in story, just as C.S. Lewis did. Finally, of course, the globe stands for the whole world, and it is the world that I want to impact. I do not wish to write merely to satisfy myself. I wish to write so that people all over the world can learn to be satisfied in Jesus.