A One-Day Apprenticeship in Posting and Prayer
A couple of weeks ago, without time for work to develop a full blog, I dashed this off to my like-minded Facebook community gathering in admiration of CS Lewis:
I had a Lewis moment early, early this morning to which you might be able to relate. I woke up about 25 minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off, thinking, "This is the length of one sitcom. I CAN pray this long."
My brain bounced from one topic and analogy to another, and I got frustrated. Then I remembered Lewis, backward through Screwtape. He urged us to pray as we are rather than to posture as we think we should be. Too often, I measure my Father's attention by PEOPLE'S. They can be dismissive or condescending when I stretch an analogy by which I'm fascinated or unfurl one too many of them or make people think on uncommon words.
If the Father can chortle, He did. Pray as you are, He comforted and challenged even more than Lewis. Who do you think wired you this way? He assured me He delights in the short and simple prayer of a moment's need and in the rhetorical flourish of which He is worthy. Praying for you all a similar sense of His Presence today.
The palpable sense of an epiphany of grace doesn't tend to last long in this mortal coil, however. For what seems like weeks, the response was… Nothing. The post wasn't even approved. New to that community, I began to second-guess myself. A strange hybrid who likes what are typically secular pursuits like the New York Times, The West Wing, and the New Yorker in addition to traditional evangelical pastimes, I've been kicked out of groups or ghosted in them before. But the smattering of times it happened it's been from the "other" side.
These presumably were brothers and sisters in Christ, and a subset of the body of Christ with whom even this strike, bookish gentlemen ought to sync without much effort. In the social void, I started to walk back the very sense of acceptance I was writing about. Even prophets and proclaimers don't tend to fill in the blanks to our benefit.
Then, breakthrough. Suddenly today, the post exploded. Not that the impact of our words centered on God's Word can be entirely measured by social media metrics, but this was one of the most liked, loved, and commented on things I've ever posted. Affirmation keeps rolling in that other Christians, other polished Christian wordsmiths, have felt what I have felt when unable to achieve what we judge as coherence before the Lord.
One even connected one of my favorite passages of Scripture, Paul's prayer at the end of the Ephesians 1, even more deeply to my heart. The poster said if we tried to Christ Paul's usually rigorous logic through this prayer, we might diagnose he had ADD. Yet, as with me in my early-morning missive, the prayer is preserved and prized.
From this one strain of God's grace through Christ, I'm beginning to gather a few insights. No writer writes for everybody. Paul's effort to be all things to all men did not involve the jujitsu of appealing to these populations all at the same time, as the writer's ego in the wide broadcast of the social media age can insist that we do. As we find community, we move from, in Lewis's own memorable introduction to Mere Christianity the great hall that encompasses all Christians to the fireside setting where we gather with a particular part of Christendom.
We begin to see a ripple of our impact on specific people. Chasing the high of specific expressions of God's approval rather than popularity, we want, graciously to be more useful with the right words at the right time. We begin to sense how to help particular people and groups. Affirmed by Him and by them, we are ready to receive feedback, more of this, less of that, without being crushed by what doesn't engage or rendered pompous by what does.
This landmark of my experience in God's grace also confirms the likelihood that less is more. What I wrote which, by God's grace, engaged, didn't take long. Time constraints forced me to concede to the fact that I could always come back and share more. What I wrote didn't take long to read. God can always drop people who thirsted and were quenched here back for more. As I am made and we made in the image of One Who is relational for the long haul and usually imparts Himself by the glimpse, I need not overwhelm those to whom I try to relate in writing.
Last, this little launch into the likeosphere reinforces the compelling nature of confessing our weakness along with Christ's strength. Next week, I may try to cram seven different quotes by seven different authors into a piece to reinforce my experience or viewpoint, but this time, where people saw, what people like, loved, and commented on where the work in progress that I am, clay, the stuff of work, in the hands of the skillful and patient Potter.
I had a Lewis moment early, early this morning to which you might be able to relate. I woke up about 25 minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off, thinking, "This is the length of one sitcom. I CAN pray this long."
My brain bounced from one topic and analogy to another, and I got frustrated. Then I remembered Lewis, backward through Screwtape. He urged us to pray as we are rather than to posture as we think we should be. Too often, I measure my Father's attention by PEOPLE'S. They can be dismissive or condescending when I stretch an analogy by which I'm fascinated or unfurl one too many of them or make people think on uncommon words.
If the Father can chortle, He did. Pray as you are, He comforted and challenged even more than Lewis. Who do you think wired you this way? He assured me He delights in the short and simple prayer of a moment's need and in the rhetorical flourish of which He is worthy. Praying for you all a similar sense of His Presence today.
The palpable sense of an epiphany of grace doesn't tend to last long in this mortal coil, however. For what seems like weeks, the response was… Nothing. The post wasn't even approved. New to that community, I began to second-guess myself. A strange hybrid who likes what are typically secular pursuits like the New York Times, The West Wing, and the New Yorker in addition to traditional evangelical pastimes, I've been kicked out of groups or ghosted in them before. But the smattering of times it happened it's been from the "other" side.
These presumably were brothers and sisters in Christ, and a subset of the body of Christ with whom even this strike, bookish gentlemen ought to sync without much effort. In the social void, I started to walk back the very sense of acceptance I was writing about. Even prophets and proclaimers don't tend to fill in the blanks to our benefit.
Then, breakthrough. Suddenly today, the post exploded. Not that the impact of our words centered on God's Word can be entirely measured by social media metrics, but this was one of the most liked, loved, and commented on things I've ever posted. Affirmation keeps rolling in that other Christians, other polished Christian wordsmiths, have felt what I have felt when unable to achieve what we judge as coherence before the Lord.
One even connected one of my favorite passages of Scripture, Paul's prayer at the end of the Ephesians 1, even more deeply to my heart. The poster said if we tried to Christ Paul's usually rigorous logic through this prayer, we might diagnose he had ADD. Yet, as with me in my early-morning missive, the prayer is preserved and prized.
From this one strain of God's grace through Christ, I'm beginning to gather a few insights. No writer writes for everybody. Paul's effort to be all things to all men did not involve the jujitsu of appealing to these populations all at the same time, as the writer's ego in the wide broadcast of the social media age can insist that we do. As we find community, we move from, in Lewis's own memorable introduction to Mere Christianity the great hall that encompasses all Christians to the fireside setting where we gather with a particular part of Christendom.
We begin to see a ripple of our impact on specific people. Chasing the high of specific expressions of God's approval rather than popularity, we want, graciously to be more useful with the right words at the right time. We begin to sense how to help particular people and groups. Affirmed by Him and by them, we are ready to receive feedback, more of this, less of that, without being crushed by what doesn't engage or rendered pompous by what does.
This landmark of my experience in God's grace also confirms the likelihood that less is more. What I wrote which, by God's grace, engaged, didn't take long. Time constraints forced me to concede to the fact that I could always come back and share more. What I wrote didn't take long to read. God can always drop people who thirsted and were quenched here back for more. As I am made and we made in the image of One Who is relational for the long haul and usually imparts Himself by the glimpse, I need not overwhelm those to whom I try to relate in writing.
Last, this little launch into the likeosphere reinforces the compelling nature of confessing our weakness along with Christ's strength. Next week, I may try to cram seven different quotes by seven different authors into a piece to reinforce my experience or viewpoint, but this time, where people saw, what people like, loved, and commented on where the work in progress that I am, clay, the stuff of work, in the hands of the skillful and patient Potter.
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