Tattered is Best

This past weekend the ACFW, American Christian Fiction Writer’s conference was held in Indianapolis. I attended a workshop taught by James Scott Bell. Mr. Bell is a Christy Award winning author and has authored many books on the craft of writing. After class I brought one of his books, Plot and Structure up to the front to ask for his signature. It wasn’t a new copy, it was tattered and worn. It had sticky notes on most pages, underlines, highlighted sections. Mr. Bell grinned when he saw the book. I said, “Look what I’ve done to your book, I use it so much.” It made me think, that’s what we look like when we allow Christ to use us.
He wakes us up from a deep sleep to pray for someone, and we think, “Oh Lord, I am so tired, let me sleep a little longer.” And we bear the marks of our tiredness around our eyes.
He brings someone to us to pray for, but it’s not in the quiet time we would have chosen. It’s in the middle of a mad dash down the hallway to get to the next workshop before the door closes. Do we stop and pray for this hurting person or do we brush them aside so we can get on to the next thing on our agenda? We stop and pray and we bear the marks, as we miss a good part of the program.
But I see God in His heaven, flipping the pages of the worn book of our lives. And he smiles. He likes the underlines of prayer, and the highlights of postponed pleasures. His fingerprints are on our pages.
May we arrive in Heaven used up, tattered and torn. For Him.