Tuesday, April 12, 2011

WAKE-UP CALL--By Elaine Stock

Today my guest blogger is Elaine Stock, whose Brooklyn accent is a delight to my ear. Elaine and I first met at the 2008 ACFW conference in Minneapolis. Thanks Elaine for being my guest today.

WAKE-UP CALL--By Elaine Stock

I write fiction. More specifically, I write fiction woven tightly with God’s love for all of us. Presently, though my newly acquired agents are about to market what I hope will be my debut novel. I’m also hoping my stories will reach the mainstream reader because I like to think of my stories as showing God’s love in the darkest of worlds, one that, sadly, everyone to some degree, can relate to.

And baby, is it ever getting darker and darker out there!

Presently, without the benefit of becoming an overnight literary sensation that brings in more cash than Nora Roberts and John Grisham combined (a girl can still dream, can’t she?), I work five days, and often forty plus hours per week as a customer rep in the food industry.

To say that 1) I meet all types of folks from saints to über . . . uh, let’s say, interesting, to 2) and am constantly learning and re-learning things about life, and myself, is an understatement.

Then, there was the woman in the grocery store the other day that practically yelled at me because I apologized for mistakenly turning into an aisle that I didn’t mean to. I uttered a little prayer for her as I drove home later. We all need God’s mercy, grace, and love.

What is really troubling me about this troubling world is our ignorance of a wake-up call. Who truly knows when the Second Coming will happen; it is not for us to know. We must live each day to the fullest, trying at the very least (because we are all humans and all constantly fail, myself included) to love one another as God loves us.

I’m watching the media’s telling of the horrific earthquake/tsunami that turned the world upside down for Japan; a year ago it was Haiti. What those poor people have had to go through is heart wrenching.

Now with Japan’s pending nuclear disaster (or, has it already occurred and the government is failing to tell all?), other countries are beginning to take stock of what disaster-filled potential sits in their own backyard, ready to destroy.

And what was this little news release the other day about the two Koreas thinking about putting aside their venom for each other and to unite to protect their people against the probability of volcano eruptions? And on an everyday-more common level, the number of shouting matches taking place under the family-roof over the truly trivial?

I’m a human being. I fall way short of perfection. Daily I make mistakes; snap into thoughts and decisions I later regret. Maybe that’s why I believe in God. Maybe that’s why I’m trying to heed His commandment of DO NOT BE AFRAID because not only does He know of the wonderful joys ahead for His daughters and sons, but He gives us daily wake-up calls to keep on trying to turn on His light in the darkness.

Guest Author Bio:
Born and raised in Brooklyn, and then enjoying the more rural areas of upstate New York, Elaine Stock never expected that a college major in psychology and sociology would walk her through the see-saw industries of food service and the weight-loss business; co-ownership with her husband in piano restoration; and ten years in community leadership. All great fodder for creating fiction. With her first short story published on Christian Fiction Online Magazine, she is represented by Reclaim Management.

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