CREATIVE PROCESS

This week I began reading Richard Wurmbrand's "Sermons in Solitary Confinement".  It has been shouting at me every time I walked past the bookshelf and I wish I had listened sooner!

This blog is for all those who are struggling in this time of transition with the difficult parts of God's creative processes in our lives.  My heart was softened and changed as I read the beautiful words of a man who was held in solitary confinement for three years in total silence.  He was beaten and tortured and memorised the little sermons he wrote as he had nothing to write on!  This is exceptional beauty, rather like John of the Cross - the presence of God in the most awful and difficult of places.  I hope whoever reads this will be equally touched and encouraged.

“I am beginning to love this silence. I sometimes make up verses to pass the time, but what I would really like would be to make men, each one of whom would be a fine piece of poetry.  In the original Greek in Ephesians, it is written that Christians are the poem (poiema) of God (Eph.2:10).  So God is a poet too.  His poems are serene, flexible, rich in meaning.  He has embodied his poems in flesh.  Each one has a different subject.  One is the embodiment of heroism, another of sanctity, another of wisdom, yet another of practical common sense.  Christians are not only different, but also sometimes divergent and even contradictory characters.  But every one is pleasing to the Lord.”

“Instead of a world in which bookshops sell volumes of sermons and poetry, I would like a world in which each man and woman is a poem of high thought, filled with melody and colour.  If I am a hindrance to the coming of such a world, may God kill me here in prison!  But this is how the world should be.”

Currently I am sifting and sorting out the debris of my life – 6 bags in the rubbish yesterday and many more to come!  Maybe in some strange way it is a prophetic indication of this time – deep digging and clearing of the clutter of our lives, a tough work, time and pain involved, in order that we will truly be conduits of His life, placed where that flow is most needed.  If so I will sift and sort with great passion and vigour J.  Strange that it all takes place when our view ahead is limited, a work of great obedience to just keep going.  Definitely something that seems to be taking place in obscurity and darkness, stripping away the familiar, and eventually throwing open a window to greater light.  I have always suspected that when we feel most alone, vulnerable and defenceless, is when the deep and marvellous things take place without our being able to see or feel them.  If we continue to believe and hold on to the passion placed within us for changed lives and a different world, we will embrace this trial with great hope J.

"For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."  Ephesians 2:10