Monday, May 23, 2005

The Answers To The Questions Nobody Even Wants To Know

After reading and rereading Acts 13:48, I finally bowed my head and prayed about it and asked God to explain the verse to me. And wouldn't you know, He did. Instantly thoughts began to fill my head, and there it was. I also asked a friend to read the verse and give me her take on it, and she brought up another angle to look at the verse with. Then I began thinking about Romans 1:20 and coupled it with Acts 13:48. So triple all of that with what my friend told me, and I've still got a lot of thinking and praying to do before I venture to explain anything to my fellow bloggers. But it all has to do with who can be saved, who will be saved, and why nobody will have an excuse as they stand before God as to why they did not accept salvation. So it'll probably be Thursday or Friday, or perhaps later, before I can push ahead with it.

I wrote about three or four pages this morning. I actually got started a lot sooner than I normally do. I actually stayed awake after the alarm woke me up the first time. I did my bible reading before I finished drinking my first mug of coffee. And I had taken my shower the night before, so that fifteen minutes was free and available. So here it is, half past nine or so, and I've got a solid two hours in which to write and two full scenes already planned in my head, but I only manged somewhere between three and four pages. On a normal morning I only sit down and write for about an hour and usually manage at least five pages. But in my defense, a storm passed through and I got all jittery. I wasn't scared. I love storms. But I guess that instinct to seek shelter crops up even though we're already perfectly sheltered. I was in a house, and I had easy access to a basement on the other side of the house. I could sit and stare at a tornado until it was a block away and still get to the basement in time. You would think the energy the storm gave me would boost my writing speed and I could whip out ten pages an hour. But I can't concentrate if I have too much energy. Writing isn't manual labor, unfortunately. If it were, I wouldn't have an ounce of body fat. You want some irony? In the very scene I was working on, it was beginning to storm just as it was beginning to storm in the real world. I guess that's irony. The whole point of the scene was that it was beginning to storm and my characters had to hasten what they were doing. I had written the beginning of that scene on Saturday, so it's not like the real storm influenced what I was writing. Coincidence more than irony. Though I suppose even a coincidence could be found ironic. Maybe irony isn't the word I'm looking for. Maybe it's some other word. My brain isn't working too well. I need to go to sleep.

I got a few new story ideas on the drive to work. One was for a murder mystery. I'm not big on murder mysteries. They're usually too predictable. And I have to think on them for a long time before I can even begin to write them because I want to see how I can make it not so predictable. The other one dealt with attempted suicide. I have a lot of story ideas that deal with attempted suicide. Suicide is a horrible thing. I had a sort of friend in college who was potentially suicidal. She was always depressed and always talking that way. And it seems like once she made some comment about wanting to kill herself, and one of us, it may have been me but I don't think it was, told her to just go ahead. She didn't. But, man, if that had been the feather on her back. It would have freaked us out. I think though that psychologists say that if someone is talking about committing suicide, then they're less likely to do it. They say that when someone is coming out of a depression and feeling good about themselves again, that's when they kill themselves. That's when they finally feel enough self worth to believe that it might actually mean something if they take their own life. See what I mean. Maybe not. I'm not sure what I mean half the time. I use all these suicide stories to portray the true meaning of life. Yes, I know the true meaning of life. I don't know the secret to life. But I know why we're here. I'll tell you about it later, though. It would be nice to back up this truth with some scripture. I know it's in there, but I don't remember where. Some of it I came up with on my own, or should I say under the influence of the Holy Spirit. But I often find that these things I thought I came up with on my own were already in the Bible, I just hadn't come across it yet. Romans 1:20 for example. Or I couldn't remember reading it. I've read all of the new testament a couple of times and a good portion of the old testament. Somewhere around a third of it. So if it's in the Bible, there's a fifty-fifty shot that I've read it at least once. I need to buckle down and work my way through the old testament. I need to read all the prophets for sure. I've read through, or skimmed through rather, the law of Moses and much of the purging of evil from the land and what not. I left of somewhere around Kings or Judges. It was a long time ago, though. There's a lot of wisdom in the old testament and it really helps you put the new testament into perspective. But a lot of it, about the first third or so, is really hard to swallow with all the laws and history. I really better be hitting the sack.

1 comment:

Carol said...

Hi Cuz,
I have been thinking about the verse you gave Acts 13:48. What I noticed is that in Acts 13:46 the Jews in Antioch judged themselves unworthy of eternal life by putting the Word away from them while the Gentiles were ordained to eternal life after they glorified the Word as of God.

Looking forward to hearing your views on this.