Get on your dancin' shoes and praise the Lord!

I don't often write in my blog, but I put on my favorite Yes song: Onward (the lyrics are on the left side bar of my blog.) This song is my prayer. The words are simple. When we were living up in the snow, I kept praying to God to lead us to a church where people really praised God--not just halfheartedly sang along with corny cowboy praise songs. No offense, everyone has a different style and taste in music. But Maranatha Christian Center believes wholeheartedly that when the Bible says so shout to the Lord, clap your hands in joy, sing your heart out to God with a song in your heart, dance and play your instruments, they mean it! You get on your feet annd clap and cry and sing out to God with all your heart. No one tells you when to do it, or that you should sit down. I always feel like I'm in school, when people up at a podium say "Now you can sit, now let's all stand."

I picture King David dancing and leaping around dressed only in his undergarments, all because he couldn't stop loving on God. His wife, Michal, watched on in embarrassment, ashamed for him. All she could see was that he was making a fool of himself in front of the people he ruled. The Bible says her response to his behavior caused her to "despise him in her heart (2 Samuel 6:16). But David chastised her, saying he danced to the Lord and would not relent.

I can just picture his face, his incredulity. No one--not even his wife--was going to take away his joy. He knew the joy of the Lord was his strength. The first time we went to Maranatha, I though: Never in my life had I ever been in a room with so many people so joyful over what God was doing for them. These are not people who are well-off, sitting back on their laurels, and enjoying the prosperity gospel so popular today. These are people who've seen the bottom and the hard knocks of Satan's onslaughts. They know who gets them out of bed each day and helps them face life without fear and bondage. And they praise God for each day they make it through in faith without stumbling. I'd never been so loved up and hugged in such a short span of time. It took my breath away. I left that first afternoon with tears in my eyes. I felt like God had given me a vision of Paradise--that I had been allowed into the courtyard of his worshippers and I felt so unworthy. It was a very humbling experience--to know I had been missing this kind of gratitude and opportunity to shout my praise to God.

God answered our prayers. We had a list of churches we'd planned to visit. This was only number two on the list. When we left church after that first service, we looked at each other. I hemmed a bit, since we'd agreed to go church shopping, but I just had to hint. "Hon, I really like this church. I mean really." Lee smiled and I knew just what he was thinking too.

God made it so clear. We have never felt at home at any church. Sure, we'd attending some nice places with some friendly people and with pastors that gave some good sermons. But we never fit in or felt right. But more than that, God's presence is so palpable in that place. The church invites Him in, and He shows up with a passion for His people. I just praise God for moving us hundreds of miles and leading us to this place that feels like home. I feel like I've come home after years of wandering and my soul is nourished. God knew what we needed, knew we needed a place where we could find Him and face Him straight on, no roundabout meandering paths. Just the Highway of Holiness stretched out clear and unhindered.

Thank you, Father, for taking our hands and leading us through that door. Surely your spirit is in that place. If you ever wanted to know what the angels sound like in heaven when they sing and praise God, just come visit Maranatha Christian Center in San Jose, CA. Or better yet, join on in.

Stranger in a Strange Land

"The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being," Chesterton writes. "almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth." This morning I felt like pondering on the universal loneliness we all feel. We've heard the expression, "no man is an island," yet we do feel like islands. I heard a sermon the other day where the pastor said there are more people now living on the earth than have ever lived in all of history, and you would think because there are so many people out there, one would never be lonely. Yet, loneliness and feelings of isolation plague humanity more than ever before.

Here's how Chesterton describes it, in his book The Everlasting Man: "Man has much more of the external appearance of one bringing alien habits from another land than of a mere growth of this one. He cannot sleep in his own skin; he cannot trust his own instincts. He is at once a creator moving miraculous hands and fingers and a kind of cripple. He is wrapped in artificial bandages called clothes; he is propped on artificial crutches called furniture. . . . Alone among the animals, he is shaken with the beautiful madness called laughter, as if he had caught sight of some secret in the very shape of the universe hidden from the universe itself. . . . It is not natural to see man as a natural product."

This feeling we experience has no place in the theory of evolution. For, if humans developed naturally out of the natural world, there would be no strange sense of alienation. But God created us to know him, long for him, and to need him. He put a God-shaped hole in our hearts that nothing will plug except the intimacy gained with him. One of my favorite scriptures is in the book of Acts, chapter seventeen, where Paul tell the Athenians that God made out of one man all humans. And that He fixed both the length of years that they should live as well as the boundaries they would roam in--to what end? So that they should seek God and actually grope for Him, so that they would find Him--although He is not far off from each of us.

That is the source of our apparent loneliness. We are meant to be lonely without God, so we will grope for him. I love that word--so rich in image. As a blind man gropes for a wall or a table to hold onto. We are fumbling around in the dark, our hands outstretched, feeling the edges of a confusing, blurry world, longing for something solid and trustworthy to lean on. To rest in.

I just finished writing my sixth novel, Someone to Blame. I found myself returning over and over in the book to the theme of safety, and our striving to feel safe in a turbulent life that offers no protection from pain and suffering. How grateful I am to know God is holding me in His everlasting arms and that no matter what cliffs I fall off of in this life, He is there to catch me--faithful, true, loving, gentle, kind, merciful, forgiving. We will run out of words to describe Him long before He runs out of amazing qualities!

Curling and Writing From a Christian Worldview

You may be wondering what curling--the sport not the hair activity--has to do with writing books to reveal a Christian worldview. When I happened upon a game on television (was it the Olympics?) I found it truly bizarre. Men skating on the ice and sweeping brooms in front of a granite stone. What on earth were they doing?

Well, for some reason, this image came to me this morning as I was puttering about my landscape jobs. I have been trying for months to smooth the way for editors to understand the fantasy market. CBA publishers have a long way to go to "get" this genre and why, how, and in what way they need to pursue it. Upon returning from the ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) conference in Dallas, I was energized and encouraged by the willingness of many there to take a look at fantasy--not just mine, but books of other authors as well. That is a big change, even from April at Mt. Hermon.

Back to curling. Sending out your fantasy book is like throwing the stone down the ice. These heavy (44 pound) granite rocks are hurled toward "the house," as the goal is called. Why is it called curling? Oh, it is thought to have been started in Scotland, and the Scots word "curr" means a low rumble, for as the stones race down the ice over the "pebble," they do make a roaring noise. Pebble is created by water droplets deliberately created on the ice's surface, hence the roar. The sweepers use brooms that momentarily melt the little bumps and are thus able to affect an alteration in the direction of the stone, helping lead it toward the goal.

So, here we are, intrepid fantasy, sci-fi, futuristic, speculative fiction writers, trying to head toward the goal of publication in a publishing climate that hardly knows we exist. We are the sweepers and the hurlers, sending out our books with focused attention, trying to make a roaring noise, and sweeping the bumps along the way to smooth the road, not just for ourselves, but for those to follow.

I am continually surprised to see the glazed-over look on editors' faces when I discuss fantasy with them. It is as if I live in a fantasy world myself--a place where the publishers are wearing strange glasses that blind them, and out of my mouth comes only gibberish. A few seem to be waking up from a deep Sleeping-Beauty-type slumber and are starting to see the facts: that 300 million people went to see the first Narnia movie--the first so-called Christian fantasy film to hit the theatres. That many of those viewers also loved reading Narnia, and have few, if any, books they can turn to for that fantasy fix. Never mind the gazillions who have read LOTR and those Harry-you-know-who books. Seven of the ten biggest selling books in history were fantasy books. Theatres are being flooded with fantasy movies. I went to a movie (a fantasy) last week and, for the first time ever, 4 of the 5 trailers for upcoming films were in the fantasy genre and most adapted from fantasy books.

The most important thing to me is this (and editors are starting to feel God's nudge): that there is a wide-open mission field out there--a "place" consisting of millions of people who only read fantasy or sci-fi. We so need to get books into their hands that are well-written, entertaining, imaginative, but that gently represent a Christian worldview. By infiltrating the fantasy market with these kinds of books, books that inspire hope and point to a God who cares, we will scatter seeds far and wide, and let God do the rest.

So, keep casting your stones out on the surface of the ice, and in the course of many days, weeks, or years, they will come back to you. That's a scripture, isn't it?