I love writing. Probably that is partly down to my personality, but mostly I think it is because this is a gift from a kind Saviour to me. I feel amazed that I can sit in the Cathedral library in Norwich, as I am doing now, and be slowed down from the onrush of tasks and needs, to let my gaze linger on Jesus.
Eleanor Trotter, my editor at Union Publishing, asked me to try to discern what it is to write a book that honours Christ. I think the Union Publishing “bullseye” is a good place to start. I have found it helpful to look over this before writing and be thoughtful about the different segments. The centre, though, is the… um… centre of it all. God is trinity. Our God is love – the eternal love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To worship God is to enter into this relationship.
So writing is relational. It is dependent on the ongoing love of our Father. It also enters into that love the same way that all of our worship does, by the person of the Son, incarnate, dying, and rising for us. The Scriptures are the very word of Christ. So, as we write, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
We behold Christ; we are transformed by the Spirit into his very likeness, glory to glory! Our hearts, the deepest seat of our affections, are warmed and filled with his love, which diffuses through our minds, wills, and emotions, and even onto the page (well, the screen). Wonderfully, when we write from Christ, about Christ, and for Christ, marvelling at and sharing the glorious salvation he is working in such wretches as I surely am, then we are worshipping in Spirit and truth. It might even bless those who read it as well.
