Sunday, November 01, 2009

CULTURAL MOSAIC

My husband said to me the other day that there’s no mystery left in the world.

When I sit down at my laptop to work on my latest manuscript, I can be (happily) interrupted many times throughout the day by emails pinging in from all parts of the globe--from Africa, the next Australia, then jump over to someone living on an island in the Pacific, not to mention the loads of writing friends I have scattered across Canada and the United States. Most of them I haven’t met in person, but that’s okay. As writers, we’re happier writing out how we feel anyway.

The common denominator between myself and all these other folks is first of all, we all love the same Lord Jesus Christ, and secondly we all feel called to write about Him. However, we don’t write songs or books on Christian living—as necessary as those things are. We write fiction—Christian Fiction.

God gives every one of His children talents, and in this bunch of people, He wired us to write stories. Our goal is to tell truth in parable form.

Many of the writers I know are from the United States, but there’s another group that I affiliate with, and they are writers who live in other parts of the world. We call ourselves International Christian Fiction Writers. Because that’s the fascinating thing about Christ, He too affiliates with people from all over. He isn’t bound by differences in culture, in fact He embraces it.

That was one of the things I loved about my old job at Trinity Western University, a Christian university here in Langley, British Columbia. In the summertime, when the undergrads went home, the school put on special Grad studies and conferences for international pastors and church workers. As a secretary, there was many a summer day I’d walk from the cafeteria, past the outside lunch tables shaded by the umbrellas emblazoned with the Coca-Cola emblem, and watch ministers, pastors, church workers of all Christian denominations walk past me. Often I’d catch a trace of their language. Their cultural clothing, especially those from Africa, would take my breath away, and my eyes would fill with tears. Our God is such a great big God—wrapping His arms around all the people He created. I was so happy to be a part of it.

Something like that has just happened in my new profession. I left my job at Trinity to take a lower-paying, less mentally demanding job, so that I could save my energies to write Christian Fiction. And again, I find myself enthralled with the color and texture of the various writers I meet. It's like what we in Canada call the meeting of all our immigrant cultures—a Cultural Mosaic. I was one of those immigrants—a four year old Irish child who came over with my mother and sister in 1962.

So today, I’m proud to introduce you to a group of people who, like me, seek to follow the calling to be one of His writers.

Please check out the launching of the International Christian Fiction Writer’s blog. Our first posting will show up November 1 at 12:00 AM Eastern Standard time.

By turn, each day, one of our group will post a piece on the flavor of writing from in international standpoint. I’ll be taking my turn as well.

So I hope to see you there. I hope you'll support us in prayer or by buying the published books, those who seek to tell about Christ in stories woven from their perspective as Christians in far-away lands.

You can also find our group on FaceBook.

I'm currently writing my third novel, and the theme of that story is the same as for this posting today:

Matthew 5:14,15,16 "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven."

So I encourage you, whatever your gifting is from the Father, use it today for His kingdom.

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