Hint Hint

Have you ever been doing a Bible study or devotion when God singles you out and let's you know this message is for you?  Sometimes it's awesome and exciting; his word can speak right to my heart at any moment.  Today it hit me below my heart right in the gut.  Is it bad news?  Hardly.  It's more like a challenge and a reality check.

Let me take you back a bit.  I decided to go to Georgia Tech for undergraduate studies for 2 reasons.  First they had an incredible variety of study abroad programs.  I had my eyes on international living even in high school and would go to any school with the best opportunities.  Second I could go to the institute of technology I grew up wanting to attend and earn my good grades by writing papers instead of crunching numbers.  Their international affairs program gave me the opportunity to research topics I was interested in and write for days about why they were important.  On at least two occasions I had to end presentations before I had completed them because class periods weren't quite long enough (what topics, you ask?  Just war theory and how it applied to the war in Iraq / Mexican drug cartels implementing terrorist techniques and its implications for U.S. national security~ would you believe a young blond from the south could get crazy passionate about such things?).  All this is to say that I have had a thing for travel and writing for quite some time.

As many of you are aware, my travel bug has been satiated a great deal in the last year.  The writing has been a constant up and down.  Composing blog entries for me is fun but it never fully satisfies.  Dorky as I am, I had a second blog for a time dedicated to political research and writings.  It was mostly for me to get thoughts on paper and out of my head, but I found public publishing to be problematic in personal relationships.  You see as much as I love current issues and ethics, I really dislike (verging on the "h" word) talking about it with friends.  Typically it produces negative results~relationships strained over something that is not intrinsic to a friendship.  As enjoyable as those papers were to write, I couldn't share them openly.

I moved on to another outlet~book reviews on facebook.  I consider myself fairly open-minded when reading novels, and I always finish what I start (with the exception of that abomination of a book that besmirched Jane Austen's good name...).  I love that I can summarize and express opinions on a book after I've consumed it.  I even get to vote on how well it is ranked for other facebookworms.  The great news is I haven't lost a friend yet for bemoaning my time with Anna Karenina or thinking On the Road was less than inspiring.  I love to praise the books that have become my good friends (hello, everything ever written by George MacDonald).  I even like rereading books I read in college and sharing what strikes me the second time around.  On the labor side, I do no research so it's kind of a writing quick fix for my addiction.

What has any of this to do with my devotion this morning?  I apologize, but we aren't there yet.  A few weeks ago I sent a cover letter, resume, and some writing samples to a local publisher with whom I recently became familiar.  It is a ministry that creates wonderful Bible studies for women.  This letter led to an email I received from the president of this company.  There were subsequent emails and phone calls which resulted in a meeting today at a coffee shop.  I had dreamed of volunteering and learning all about the publishing and the creative process when facing new projects.  For a ministry, no less!  Now I may have hyped the international affairs appreciation, but in reality I want to work in ministry.  Most of my jobs have been in the context of church or missions, and it's where I feel in my element.  Perhaps it's knowing God has a purpose and a plan that I get to be a part of.  Maybe it's because I'm more likely to focus on my relationship with my God when freely allowed to follow him in my work environment~ that's 8 bonus hours of quality time per day. It'd be a dream come true to find a position doing research or writing in a ministry.

So here's what God told me this morning before I headed off for my dream of all dream meetings~  one who hopes to effect any good by his writings will find that he will instruct very few; the most powerful means of promoting what is good is by example (loosely taken from Lewis Bayly's The Practice of Piety).  God followed it up with a very apropos scripture from Paul:  You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody.  You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human heart.  Even as I write this very garrulous blog entry, I have to ask myself~ am I an open book?  Am I a letter from Christ?  How have I read 2 Corinthians before and never had these words jump out at me?  The day I thought I'd be vying for a position writing for God is the day I learned his Spirit is the writer and I am his published work.

As for my meeting, it went well and I received some brilliant career counseling.  We'll see what happens.  In the meantime, I'm going to delve into the scriptures and spend time with my favorite Writer.