God in All The Things

 The chaplain of a club I was in in college used to entertain us greatly with her devotionals because she usually forgot she was supposed to even do one. The president would turn to her during our meetings and say, “Okay, Miss Chaplain, time for devotions” . . . and her eyes would bug out for a moment. She would stutter a bit and then pick up whatever object she could find at hand and start to extemporize.

“So, ladies. Tonight. I want to talk tonight about . . . this pen. This pen is a very useful device. You can write with it. You can draw with it. You can, um, poke a hole with it. But you see, the thing about this pen . . . (here you’d see the wheels cranking in her head) . . . it doesn’t do those things by itself. It is only useful when it is in the hands of a writer. Yeah . . . yeah, there we go . . . so we are like pens. We are tools in God’s hands to write the story He wants to write. Yeah. Amen.”

Smirk. Good improv, Donna.

This semester, I’m teaching a playwriting class at my theater. I feel like I’m kind of completely unqualified since nobody ever taught me how to write plays. (On the other hand, I’ve actually written a lot of plays, so I guess I’ve got a leg up on most of the population.)

While discussing this class with a playwriting friend, we were talking about where we start when we get ready to write: with a character, a situation, or a theme. When I write a play, unless I’m using a story someone else has written (Everyman, Pilgrim’s Progress, Wemmicksville . . . gee, I do that a lot), I seem to often start with a situation – or even just a setting. A riverside, and a whole bunch of scenes that could happen there (Come to the River). A church lobby, and all the different meaningful moments that occur there (Hope Is a Meeting Place). A group of people interacting in a restaurant with a story that keeps rewinding and changing (Do-Overs).

Only after I’ve written several conversations do I start finding connections between those conversations. And only after a storyline starts evolving do I notice a theme. Ohhh --- these scenes at the river are all about Transformation. The restaurant rewinds are about Choices. The moments in the church lobby all point us to Hope.

I start with life happening. And then I eventually see where God is in the life that is happening – because He’s always there somewhere. Even in that pen Miss Chaplain picked up randomly to offer a cheesy devotion over.

And you know, blogging is kind of a similar process for me. I’m living my life and notice all these God-things around me.  And then the writing about those God-things – that ends up being a God-thing in itself. I’ve always been amazed that anyone cares to read my blog because all too often, it is just some rambling elaboration of a random thought or observation or moment that struck me in recent days (like this one you're reading, from that conversation with my playwright friend). I start writing about this thing, and then I start finding meaning and connections and God in that thing. It’s all about me, really – a rather self-absorbed endeavor. God and me. Me, me, me.

The very fact that anyone else in the world finds meaning or connections or God in what I write . . . well, that’s kind of a God-thing, too. Lord knows I want to be a pen in His hand.