From Edie: Tim Suddeth shares why God calls us to write, how faithful writing produces an eternal harvest, and why success is measured by obedience—not recognition.
Why God Calls Us to Write: Understanding the Harvest of Faithful Writing
by Tim Suddeth @TimSuddeth
For the last few months, we’ve been looking at the similarities between growing a garden and writing. We started with finding the right seeds/ideas, preparing the plot, tending the garden, and today I want us to look at our purpose for gardening and writing—the harvest.
Whenever I sit down to write for The Write Conversation, I realize I’m targeting a wide range of writers: published and closet writers; fiction and nonfiction; those who write flash fiction and short devotions and those who write novels and sci-fi sagas; those with books in bookstores and those who write for periodicals and bloggers and podcasters. Writers who scratch on paper, key peckers, and voice-to-text users. Some of us write daily no matter what, while others write when the spirit moves or they get around to it. (BTW I have a round-to-it in my desk that I got at Chimney Rock years ago).
With so much variety in the ways we write, there must also be as many reasons for why we write: to get anyone to read how we feel, to get published, to win an award, to be a bestseller, to make a mint (I mean, isn’t everyone else at the conferences or writing groups rolling in dough? (Queue the laugh track.))
And some of us write to understand ourselves better. Flannery O’Connor said, “I don’t know what I think until I read what I said.”
But let’s dive even deeper into why we write. Because for the Christian writer, the externals are usually not as strong as the internal pull we feel. We have more of an internal beckoning, a calling, a prickling that impels us to explore the life, or the journey, in which we find our writing taking us. It needles us even if we haven’t put it on our About Me pages or in our mission statements. We probably haven’t even articulated the thought, but like a bird’s instinct to migrate, it leads us to express how we feel, how we see life.
We see this common desire when we’re with other Christian writers, whether they write for the general or Christian markets. It’s an indescribable something that becomes a connector. (Uh, Tim. You’re a writer. Isn’t it your job to describe it? Well, hang on.)
I felt it at this year’s Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference. I admit, at first, I was reluctant to go. Life, you know. This year I’m attending four writers’ conferences as an attendee (Boy, are you dense?). That’s a lot to subject my family to. But Blue Ridge has been special in my development, and I didn’t want to miss their 250th (oops, sorry, that’s something else), their 50th anniversary.
It happened during the first morning session, after Russell and Kristi had led us in musical worship and we had the devotion. The keynote began speaking. And I realized I had connected with the strangers around me. That although I didn’t know the names of the people in the room or where they were from, on some level we had connected in a . . . call(?), a purpose? Have you ever felt this?
I realized that even though we were there with different agendas, experiences, and circumstances, as Christians we stand in obedience before a single, The single, Lord God. In that moment, everything that separated us was stripped away and I stood with the others before the Holy One in anticipation of…
And I knew that despite my earlier reluctance, I was in the right place, with the right/write/Right community. And although I’m torn between the different mediums I want to write in, that writing, if not the main purpose of my life, is an important part of my living sacrifice to Him.
Let’s pause and hold onto that thought a moment.
I’ve had that realization before at a different conference, a very different type of conference, where we did not start with a prayer or a devotion. Where the Holy One was not lifted up corporately. It was my first time attending there, and I was ready for it to be different from the Asheville Christian Writers Conference or Blue Ridge that I’d attended before. But like God likes to do, He surprised me. (He’s sneaky like that, isn’t He?) It must have been between classes, because a group of us sat at a table and began sharing our walks, how God was using us individually. Nothing formal, just sharing. And people began pulling chairs up to join us. Although we might not have lifted Him up as a group, there was a significant segment that wanted to please Him.
I silently winked at God for reminding me that wherever He sends me, He goes along, too.
When we look at our writing harvests, we can see two different types.
Two Types of Harvests
1. A Continual Harvest
Many crops produce fruit throughout its season. If we look at tomato plants, these are the indeterminate, vining types. The vines never stop growing and can reach as high as eight feet as they continuously produce big, juicy tomatoes until the first frost.
Such is the writer’s life. Most of us will have many stories, articles, or poems to share. Probably not as many as Isaac Asimov. He wrote or edited more than 500 books and over 90,000 letters and postcards. Thankfully, it isn’t the final number that is important, but the constant growth, the learning the craft, and our learning about ourselves that is must valuable.
For a writer, the writing is never finished (A lot of editors would say that’s how they feel when they’re waiting for us to meet our deadlines.). It’s a part of who we are.
2. The Ultimate Harvest
But some crops produce fruit that ripens all at once. In tomato plants, these are called determinate plants. They have a set time when they produce their entire harvest. For cantaloupes, you plant the seeds and about 90 days later you have the sweet melon
To me, this represents our writing as it comes to an end. As all our writings will. And though we usually try not to think about it (and I figure that I’ve just lost many readers), it may be one of the most important questions we can ask. Because, although we cannot decide ahead of time everything we’ll write and do, we can decide the why. And for whom.
If you’ve read this series of gardening posts, you’ll know that this is a theme that has run all through the series, from choosing an idea, to starting the work, to cultivating our writing process. The Christian does all this for one reason: to please Him. To hear, “Well done, My faithful servant.”
After all that He has given us, how will it feel when we return it into His hands. I don’t think we’ll feel shame of our failures or lack of effort. Instead, His love, not our efforts, will predominate. I always see it as the little, curly-haired girl looking up and handing wilting wild dandelions to her Daddy.
And He always graciously accepts.
There’s another truth we need to look at as we consider our harvests. That’s the question of whose harvest is it? Because if we do it for him, in Him, and through Him, then it’s not our harvest, is it? In the Bible, God’s followers are called servants, workers, friends, and children. Whatever work He has called us to do, it is for Him. So, our writing is not just our individual collections, but His harvest. Like we see in the parables of the talents.
Whether you write the next Left Behind series, The Purposed Filled Life, or a Dilbert cartoon, if you did it for Him, it’s His harvest for His enjoyment and for Him to do with as He pleases.
So, that blog that no one reads, or those bedtime stories you write for your kids to enjoy at bedtime, they are all part of His harvest and work.
That makes us part of something pretty special, doesn’t it?
Doesn’t He?
TWEETABLE
Don't miss the other posts in this series!
1. Weeds in Your Writing Life
2. How Writers Find and Develop Story Ideas
1. Weeds in Your Writing Life
2. How Writers Find and Develop Story Ideas
Tim Suddeth is a stay-at-home dad and butler for his wonderful, adult son with autism. He has written numerous blogs posts, short stories, and three novels waiting for publication. He is a frequent attendee at writers conferences, including the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference and a member of Word Weavers and ACFW. He lives near Greenville, SC where he shares a house with a bossy Shorky and three too-curious Persians. You can find him on Facebook and Twitter, as well as at www.timingreenville.com and www.openingamystery.com.
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