Dipping the Quill Deeper: A Special Reading

by Eva Marie Everson @Everson_Author

I can’t help it; this time of year, my mind slips back to my childhood, to Christmas tunes playing on Mother’s stereo—Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams—the tinsel on our tree dripping from branches like fine strands of lace, the chilly, inviting air outside, the counting down the days until Jolly Ole Saint Nick finally came. Seems to me that for so many years, my baby brother and I wore what we called “footy pajamas.” I can still hear the sound they made as our feet slapped against the hardwood floors of our home. Pitty-pat, pitty-pat, pitty-pat . . .

Dipping the Quill Deeper: From Conquered to Conqueror

by Eva Marie Everson

John Wesley (1703-1791) the English cleric who became a leader of a revival movement known as Methodism, once wrote these words:

After my return home, I was much buffeted with temptations, but I cried out, and they fled away. They returned again and again. I as often lifted up my eyes, and He “sent me help from his holy place.” And herein I found the difference between this and my former state chiefly consisted. I was striving, yea, fighting with all my might under the law, as well as under grace. But then I was sometimes, if not often, conquered; now, I was always conqueror (Journal of John Wesley, “I Felt My Heart Strangely Warmed”).

As we writers prepare for upcoming conferences, whether we are new to this writing thing or not, we often find ourselves returning home with a source of positivity pulsing through our arteries and veins that declares, “I can do this! I can write a book . . . an article . . . a blogpost . . . a devotion . . . a poem.” We have everything we need now. Someone told us we canwrite. Someone else showed us how to beef up the weak areas. Someone pointed out where our strengths lie. We sat under the masters of the craft and took copious notes. We returned home and pored over them and, then . . .

Dipping the Quill Deeper—Sitting Alone, With God

by Eva Marie Everson @EvaMarieEverson

I sit down alone,

Only God is here;

In his presence I open,

I read his books;

And what I thus learn,

I teach. ~~ John Wesley

I recently went away for five days to study God’s Word and to write on a particular focus concerning it, all of which will assemble to be, I hope, my next work of nonfiction. For the better part of each day, I sat with four large books open—three versions of the Bible and one Bible commentary—a yellow-paged, lined legal pad, a pencil, and two pens. I’m not sure why I felt the need for two pens; I just did.