October 2005

I often struggle with God’s timing. At times I have casually quipped that I don’t have God’s wristwatch because His timing and mine don’t seem to be the same. I’ve struggled with impatience, wanting to make my dreams come true now – not ten more years from now or whenever that distant sometime happens to be. I’ve even gone so far as to think that maybe God doesn’t want me to pursue writing for publication any longer. It is true that He says no sometimes. Maybe His lack of showing up on my schedule means I am supposed to quit. It’s been a long and difficult struggle.

And I realize that deep down, God doesn’t seem all that fair sometimes. Especially when I watch friend after friend achieve my dreams ahead of me. I have often prayed with the psalmist, “How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?” It’s a legitimate question, I think.

But then earlier this week, when I was sharing some of these thoughts with a friend, she directed me to John Piper’s website to read an article about impatience. You can read it here.

My question to my friend was, “is impatience a sin?” I kind of suspected it was, but I was trying to stay in denial over it. John’s article snapped me out of my self-imposed denial and got me to pondering impatience.

I went to some of the verses John lists and one in particular has stayed with me. It is Hebrews 6:10 and it says, “For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister.”

It was that “God is not unjust to forget your work” part that got me. It helped me to see that God has not forgotten my work, my years of writing, my striving to please Him and my longing to see my writing minister to the saints. And by imagining that He has forgotten me, by thinking that His timing is never going to catch up with mine is to say that He is unjust. In plain English, it’s like a child telling his parents they are “so unfair!”

Yeah, that’s probably how I sounded to Him in my struggling and striving through this constant waiting. I think I understand how Abraham and Sarah felt when they jumped ahead of God and thought Hagar could be the answer to their prayers for a child. Never mind that God had promised them an heir in His time. They were tired of waiting.

How well I can relate! But God is not unfair or unjust. I am simply impatient with His timing. And yes, that is a sin because it is a lack of faith in God to keep His Word. He knows the plans He has for me, and He is not being mean or unkind because they are not being fufilled as quickly as I would like. He is just waiting for that perfect moment to bless me. And His blessings are beyond all that I could ever ask or imagine!

He only asks one thing of me…

Be patient.

This past weekend I made two exciting discoveries with regard to my work in Biblical fiction. The first was the fact that this past August (2005) an archaeologist discovered the palace of King David just outside the old Jebusite walls of Jerusalem! To read more on the subject, click here.

Her work is not finished, of course, and there is much more to uncover, but from everything I read, I am excited with the discovery. Eventually, archaeology confirms the Scriptures, and I am thrilled to see this, considering how many years I’ve devoted to studying King David’s life.

The second discovery also came about during my research on King David. A new friend, Wendy Lawton, and I were discussing the pronunciation of Michal’s name at the ACFW Conference. Years ago, when I began writing Michal’s story, I pronounced her name Mich-al (short i, al sounding like the male name Al). Then I looked in a Bible dictionary and it said her name should be pronounced Mi-chal (like the masculine Michael).

Wendy had me listen to a portion of her Bible on tape where the speaker kind of rolled his tongue but the pronunciation was more like my original Mich-al (but with the al sounding like all). I liked the sound but wasn’t totally convinced. :)

Well, in my research this weekend, I ran across a Hebrew Bible, which has the Hebrew words alongside the English words and you can click on a link that allows you to hear the verse read in Hebrew. How fun! So I found the spot in I Samuel where Michal’s name is listed and started listening.

Wendy was right! Though the Hebrew is slightly different that the Scottish speaker on her tape, it was very similar. I was amazed at the different ways the names are pronounced in Hebrew. David is Da-veed. Saul is Shau-ool. But rather than take my feeble typed attempts at explaining it, you can check it out for yourself at this site.

Enjoy!

I’m reading Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River right now, and yesterday his character Reuben made a statement that stuck with me. He said, “In fact, I’ve learned, trials are mostly a succession of waits.” Writing for publication is also a succession of waits. Maybe that’s why it often feels like a trial! :)

On the other hand, writing has its own wonderful sucession of joys. Turning a phrase that makes the mind ponder, crafting a sentence that makes the heart sing, these and so much more are the joys of the written word. I dare say that most writers began writing for the simple pleasure of the act. To read over what we have written, at least the first time through, can bring an almost euphoric feeling.

Then we go to sleep and read it again and think it stinks. But that’s where rewriting comes in. :)

Eventually, if you stick with writing long enough, you will write well enough to find that you actually enjoy your own story. And if we are honest, that is what we intended. When I began writing, it was not because I wanted to be a published author. I wanted to read a novel about the life of King David. I searched high and low for such a novel, and it was not out there. I managed to find a couple of very old novels in the basement of a used bookstore about David’s life, but they weren’t written the way I wanted them to be. And in the 15 years since I began my search, I have yet to find such a book. Until this summer.

In May I began to rewrite my Biblical novel, Michal, Daughter of the King. I cut 18K words from it and worked like crazy to make it good. I read it three times within six weeks, and every time I loved it more.

I discovered something in all that work. I had finally found what I was looking for! I had found the book I had longed to read – well, at least the first part of it. I have a series planned, and I won’t be totally satisfied until I have written all four books.

Somewhere along the line my desire to read a book about King David turned into wanting to publish a book about King David. Funny, that publishing desire has only changed in focus (now I write from the point of view of David’s wives), not in content. These are the stories of my heart, my passion. And I intend to write the books whether they are ever published or not.

When I write only with the intention of publication, that is when writing becomes a succession of waits. When I write for myself, to create the book I long to read, then the trial is only in making it good enough to satisfy my own perfection.

Does that mean I throw away the effort to publish, in order to avoid the trials? If God leads me to, yes. But I don’t think God is interested in me running from trials. In fact, He seems fo value their effect – since they produce His highly valued patience.

So that succession of waits isn’t as bad as it sounds. It can produce a lot of good in us. We just need to remember the joy in the process.

How often have we had something wonderful happen in our lives and proclaimed, “God is good!”? I hear that every now and then, especially when the person truly wants to give God the glory in their circumstances. They are just so pleased with His surprise blessings that the reaction is to praise Him and declare Him good.

There is nothing wrong with that. It’s true – God is good.

Then why does that phrase, when spoken due to some great blessing, rub me the wrong way?

I asked myself that yesterday when I heard it again in this context. The blessings of God really are amazing, from the beauty of nature to the wonder of birth, to the promise of eternal life for those who trust Him, God is good.

But not everything that happens in our lives is good. Death isn’t good. Deferred hope isn’t good – Proverbs says it makes the heart sick. Disaster isn’t good. And sometimes, when those things happen to us, we blame God. He doesn’t seem very good to us then – only when He gives “yes” answers to our prayers or blesses us beyond measure.

But isn’t He good even in those bad times? Does God change? The Bible says He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. If that is the case, then God is good all the time – even in our darkest hours.

Maybe that’s why only hearing people praise His goodness when things go their way rubs me wrong. It’s not that I’m not happy for them or don’t share in their joy. But if He’d said “no”, would He still be good in their eyes?

They say that success is a truer test of faith than failure. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. I think success brings out the nature of our attitudes toward the Lord though. And it is good that we praise Him when He blesses us. But do we also declare Him good when things don’t go as we’d planned?

God is good – all the time – isn’t He?

I’ve written Biblical fiction on and off for fifteen years. I was introduced to the genre in my teens when I read Marjorie Holmes Two From Galilee. That book became one of my all time favorites, which I read every Christmas for years. It illumined the Scriptures and brought Mary and Joseph to life.

Over the years, I’ve worked to write my own Biblical stories that would hopefully do the same thing – illumine the Scriptures and bring the characters into sharper focus. Not that I could ever improve on Scripture – just that a story shaped around the characters can help the reader connect with the people of the Bible. Hopefully, my stories would in turn cause the reader to search the Scriptures for themselves to see if these things are so.

But I’ve learned that this type of Biblical fiction is not the only kind out there. Today there are two kinds of Biblical fiction on the market – revisionist and apologist.

The revisionist storyteller takes the Bible story and weaves a tale with little regard for the way the Bible documents the story. They do not see the Bible as inerrant and infallible. Inspired, perhaps, but also humanly flawed. Because of this view, they have no problem taking traditional Bible stories and turning them on their head, with a totally different meaning in the end.

The apologist writer sees the Bible as the inspired, inerrant Word of God, and is careful to keep the facts of Scripture intact while weaving their tale around what isn’t there – filling in the blanks the Bible leaves out. Their stories take the traditional tales and show them from different angles, different points of view, yet all the while staying true to God’s Holy Word.

I’ve read many apologist Biblical novels over the years written mainly by Christian authors. Most are well done, some are superb. Some examples are Francine Rivers’ Lineage of Grace series (always well done) and Sons of Encouragement series; Lynn Austin’s Chronicles of the King series (great books!); and Angela Hunt’s Shadow Women (touched my heart) to name a few. One of my favorite stories was Abigail by the late Lois Henderson.

Recently, I’ve been reading two revisionist Biblical novels. One – Queenmaker – covers some of the same characters in my own Biblical series surrounding King David. The other is The Red Tent, which spent time on the NY Times Bestseller’s List.

While I do see some literary merit in these revisionist stories, I am saddened by the way they portray the Biblical account. God is not given any kind of prominence in their tales – at least in the Biblical sense – and in Queenmaker King David is painted as a self-centered jerk. The author left out so much richness that is David, evident through the Psalms and other Biblical writings that is not a fair picture of his character.

The Red Tent also shows very little regard for the God of Israel. While Jacob may have worshipped Yahweh, his wives are shown as idol worshippers, bowing to the “queen of heaven”. Canaanite people living at the time of Jacob may have practiced such idolatry, but God called Abraham out, away from such practices, and his descendents, Isaac and Jacob, would have followed their forefather’s footsteps. Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, defines who the Jews are as a people. To give Him such little place in these stories diminishes His prominence in the lives of those Biblical characters.

My hope is that readers of either type of novel – revisionist or apologist – will pick up a Bible and check out whether the author did their job and stayed true to the original story. Since the writers of the Bible were the only eyewitnesses or near witnesses to the events recorded there, it makes sense to listen to what they had to say.

That’s what I hope readers do with my own Biblical novels someday.

Did you guess who the two sisters were? It was a modern day rendition of the tale, but if you are familiar with people from the Bible, you may know these women. They were Rachel and Leah, the two wives of Jacob.

As to who learned contentment first, well, let me tell you a bit more of their original story.

In the Biblical account, Leah was given to Jacob to wife – a deceitful gift because Jacob thought he was marrying Rachel. He’d worked seven long years for Rachel, only to wake up the next morning beside her sister. A week later, after Leah’s wedding week was complete, Rachel married Jacob.

In our culture it’s hard to imagine sharing a husband, and in truth, God never intended it that way. Polygamy was never His plan. And in this case, it didn’t appear to be Jacob’s either. But he was stuck with two wives, like it or not. One he loved – Rachel. The other he didn’t – Leah.

God looked down and saw that Leah was not loved, so He gave her children, while Rachel remained barren. With every child, Leah’s plea was the same – maybe now my husband will love me.

Rachel, on the other hand, had Jacob’s love without question. And yet she was miserable because she could not give him a son.

The rivalry between the siblings went on for years, and I doubt that Leah ever truly shared more than a companionship with Jacob. Whereas Rachel held his heart.

But Rachel’s rivalry went beyond her sister’s. She tried herbal remedies, resorted to surrogate parenting, and finally conceived on her own. But even with the birth of her son, she was not content. Rather than give thanks for the son she now held in her arms, she prayed only that God would give her another. She died in answer to that prayer.

Leah’s fourth child was Judah. The first three sons brought the hope of Jacob’s love. But by Judah’s birth, the Bible simply says that Leah praised the Lord. No longer vying for her husband’s affection, this time her focus turned to Yahweh.

I believe in this Leah found contentment. She could not control Jacob’s heart. And she learned that even her children could not replace that longing for Jacob’s love. But in praising the Lord, she learned to be content in whatever state she found herself.

I’d like to think that after Rachel’s death that Jacob sought Leah’s company more often. Perhaps they talked by moonlight, and though he might not have loved Leah with the passion of youth, perhaps they grew fond of each other as they grew old together, two souls knit together through circumstances they did not choose.

In any case, jealousy – that green-eyed monster – hounded Rachel until her death. But Leah gave it a fatal blow when she turned to Yahweh and learned to praise.