I want to give birth

I was hoping to get your attention with the title of this blog!  I was sitting working today listening to one of my favorite bands, my mind and my heart straying in the netherworld of nonthought that is caffeine crash when a thought and a desire bubbled to the surface of my murky moodiness.  I actually meant for it to.  I do this often you see.  I set my heart on a quest for the Lord and let it run without editing until I stumble on something of the Holy Spirit or at least something of a little thicker substance than the moment by moment chicken broth of feelings and convictions.  Some of the most dramatic revelations from the Lord have come in moments like this when I saturate my heart with the word and then ask the Holy Spirit to guide my random contemplation to gravitas!  It actually happened two times today but the first time is much to big and unexplored for today's blog.  I'll get back to you in a couple of weeks after I have had some Bible time with it, but I digress. 

 

The particular flash of light I want to ponder in writing right now is this.  To produce anything of real beauty and lasting significance it requires patience, diligence and careful effort.  I am listening now to my flavor of the last six months This Will Destroy You.  They are a band from Austin Texas whose instrumental post-rock has been serenading my soul.  At the moment they have shifted my entire idea of what kind of music I enjoy.  I highly recommend them, but I digress again.  I began to think about the creative process.  Some of my friends are in another state as I type and they are laboring over their first foray into the post-rock small town (I would say "world" but it's just not that big) and it is proving to be a challenge.  I worth while challenge, but a challenge none the less.  I began to chew on the reality that I have never really spent a considerable amount of time and energy on any creative endeavor.  Sure I've taken a few minutes to sit down and pound out a blog, or a few days to write a poem to completion but those things by their very nature are capturing one moment in time and labor over them would most likely steal the very spontaneity they are meant to ensnare.  They are also transient in their scope and significance; and only relevant for about as long at it took to create them, but to see something come that will have deep meaning and longevity takes time and blood sweat and tears.  I realized today that other than maybe one exception (my Casimir Pulaski book that I have been working on now for six months at least) I have never really done any extensive, intensive, costly creative work, but I want to. 

 

The Lord has called me during the next season of my life to become a deeper, richer, more honest, person.  He wants me to be a man of maturity, humility, bravery and substance.  A man of eloquence and depth born of drinking deeply from His Word and His presence and quietly, open-heartedly, searching for His revelation in history and the world.  I don't want anything that comes cheap.   I don't want anything that won't last.  I don't want anything that doesn't smack of Sovereign Holy Glory.  From that place of humble receiving will come things of honest beauty.  Things that will glorify my Holy Father and reflect the light of the glory of His grace in Christ Jesus.  Things I can lay at His feet at the end of the day and say, "it came from you, through you in me, and now finally back to you my King."

 

So now back to the title.  I heard a story once that a well known preacher sat down after a magnificent sermon and almost collapsed in his chair.  When the man sitting next to him asked him why he was so exhausted he said something to the effect of, "that is as close as any man ever comes to carrying and giving birth to a child".  I want to carry something beautiful and then give birth to it through pain and travail.  Then I will love it and care enough about it to hold myself from cutting corners and making excuses.  Lord impregnate me!

 

Amen