Month: March 2018

The Priority of the Season

On By Michele Huey, Author & SpeakerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

 

“Patience means waiting God’s time without doubting God’s love.” (Our Daily Bread, 3/2/2009)

For we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose for them. – Romans 8:28 NIV

 

“Obeying God,” I told my husband recently, “isn’t simple or easy.”

I was referring to taking a sabbatical from writing fiction. I didn’t want to do it. I love getting lost in the story, letting the characters carry me away on a journey of their own making. It’s a high like no other, this thrill of writing fiction.

At least it was for my first three books. Then came the elephant – my fourth novel, book two of the PennWoods Mystery series. Like Mama Elephant carries her baby in her womb for two years before giving birth, so too has been the gestation period for Ghost Mountain. Over two years, six partial drafts and more dead ends than I cared to count.

It isn’t that I no longer want to write fiction. I do. More than anything. I miss dancing with the muse. It’s that I’d lost the passion, the excitement for the story. “No tears in the writer,” Robert Frost once said, “no tears in the reader.”

What happened?

Life happened. With all its crises, issues and upcoming changes. Things that take time, energy, emotion, and prayer. Things on which I need to focus before I can move on to pursuing the vision of writing. For now I’m called to lay my Isaac down.

I think of how Abraham felt when God told him to offer his only son – the son he’d waited a lifetime for – to Him as a sacrifice. Sacrifice – giving up something you want for a higher purpose.

Renowned Christian author and speaker Priscilla Shirer had to lay her Isaac down at one point in her life, too. When her sons were born, her priorities changed. Between gigs of traveling the country and speaking to hundreds of women, she changed diapers. She soon sensed God telling her to put the speaking ministry aside for a season.

She obeyed.

In time, Lifeway contacted her: Instead of Priscilla travelling to, say 10 different churches in an area, she would travel to one central location and the women from those churches would come to that venue. Awesome! Less time. Same effort. More people reached with the messages God gives her.

She obeyed God and took a Sabbath from what she knew she was called to do. Then, at the right time, God gave her ministry back to her, better, more effective, more efficient, and allowing time for her growing family. It was like the Israelites gathering twice as much manna on the sixth day in the same amount of time and with the same amount of effort as they did on the other five days because they were not to gather manna on the Sabbath. They obeyed. God blessed them with a double portion.

Essentially God told them, “You honor my Sabbath on the seventh day, and I’ll give you a double portion on the sixth.”

“Focus on the priority of the season,” Priscilla writes in her Bible study Breathe.

The priority of the season. With health and family issues, and DH’s upcoming retirement, life is just too tumultuous right now to focus on writing fiction. I am, however, reading it and studying the craft while I wait for God to open the door again and say, “Now.”

Thank You, God, that You haven’t removed the dream, the desire, to write fiction from my heart. Give me the wisdom to use this time wisely and strength for the wait. Amen.

Read and meditate on Genesis 22:1–18; Exodus 16:21–26

© 2018 Michele Huey. All rights reserved.

Blarney, Baloney, or Ballyhoo

On By Michele Huey, Author & SpeakerIn Uncategorized2 Comments

 

 

 

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God endures forever. –Isaiah 40:8 NIV


On St. Patrick’s Day, it seems, everyone is Irish.

We love the story of the man who supposedly drove out the snakes from Ireland and used a shamrock, with its three leaves, to teach the Irish about the Trinity.

We do love our heroes, and we do love our holidays, don’t we? But how often do we stop and think about the holiday we’re celebrating? Or do a little research into the real life of the hero?

We associate St. Patrick – and the shamrock – with Ireland.

But in reality, he was actually the son of wealthy Roman citizens who was kidnapped as a teenager and taken to Ireland, where he was sold as a slave. Like Moses and David of old, Patrick spent his days and nights on a lonely mountainside watching his master’s sheep, often in brutal conditions.

After six years, he escaped and returned home, no longer the spoiled and rebellious teenager he was when he was abducted. Instead of assuming a life of privilege as his family expected, he felt called to return to Ireland – this time as a missionary. The rest, as they say, is history. Or legend. Or myth.

Actually, there were no snakes in Ireland for Patrick to banish. Except the snakes of paganism, superstition, petty Irish rulers and religious leaders who jealously guarded their turf. And the shamrock? According to one of Ireland’s leading botanists, “Shamrocks exist only on St. Patrick’s Day. Every other day of the year, it’s known simply as young clover.”

Over time symbolism evolved into story, which we too often accept as fact. But the beauty of the legend of St. Patrick isn’t in the myths we celebrate. It’s in the true story of the transcendent purpose and transforming power of God in Patrick’s life.

You see, it was on that desolate mountain that young Patrick found God ­– and his true purpose in life.

Funny how God uses the hard times to get our attention. And change our lives. And transform us, molding us into the vision He has for each of us.

Are you enduring hard times?

Hang in there and work with God. He has allowed this time for a reason.

My friend and sister-in-Christ Lillie often reminds me of God’s view on our difficulties: “ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD. ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV).

We have to sift through legends and myths to discover the germ of truth in them, but we can take God at His Word.

And that’s no blarney!

Lord, it can be so confusing, living in this world, trying to discern what is true and what is false, what is fact and what is embellished story. Remind me to cling to Your Word in times of doubt, knowing that You never lie. Amen.

Read and meditate on Psalm 19

Read “The Real Story of St. Patrick” here.

© 2018 Michele Huey. All rights reserved.