crazy week

Well, a glance at my calendar for this week made me ask, "How do I let these things happen?" Life sure does have a way of messing up my plans. I have appointments in the afternoon every day of this week. They are all things I need to do and cannot put off. Thus, I’m going to need to make mornings super-productive.

After mentioning Finding Forrester in a post a few days ago, I pulled it off my DVD rack and popped it into the player last evening. It’s such a good film. And I didn’t have the quote quite right, although I had the essence of it. I loved his "First drafts are from the heart. Second drafts are from the head." (That may not be precise either; I didn’t write them down.) Even though I am someone who continues to tinker and edit as I create, I still believe that first drafts are from the heart. Why else bother?

Over the past week or so, the Tozer devotionals I get daily from Insight for Leaders have been on the topic of Failure and Success. Today’s was on not competing with other servants of God. What Tozer, a pastor, wrote in The Price of Neglect, pages 104-105, was about other pastors and congregations. Because it is so hard not to play the comparison game when one is in the writing business, I’ve taken Tozer’s prayer and made it my own. The changes I’ve made are bracketed.

Dear Lord, I refuse henceforth to compete with any [Christian novelist]. They have [readerships] larger than mine. So be it. I rejoice in their success. They have greater gifts. Very well. That is not in their power nor in mine. I am humbly grateful for their greater gifts and my smaller ones. I only pray that I may use to Thy glory such modest gifts as I possess. I will not compare myself with any, nor try to build up my self-esteem by noting where I may excel one or another in Thy holy work. I herewith make a blanket disavowal of all intrinsic worth. I am but an unprofitable servant. I gladly go to the foot of the class and own myself the least of Thy people. If I err in my self judgment and actually underestimate myself I do not want to know it. I purpose to pray for others and to rejoice in their prosperity as if it were my own. And indeed it is my own if it is Thine own, for what is Thine is mine, and while one plants and another waters it is Thou alone that giveth the increase.

Amen.

In the grip of His grace,
Robin