BACKWARDS PRAYER
I believe even atheist writers pray when they send manuscripts off to agents, editors, and publishers. Hey, if a prayer helps to bring attention to your manuscript, why not?
For sure, Christian writers pray up a storm. I joined in the pack. It felt very much like my prayer for the lottery, “Lord, let me win the $20 million jackpot, and I’ll be a good example to the world on how to spend it. I will. Really.”
God up in heaven must have one entire galaxy saved for all the prayers from Christian writers, “Lord, if it be Your will, please let my book be published, and let it be a million seller, and let me show everyone how humble I can be when Oprah chooses it for her book club. I promise. I know I can be humble. Really. Please, please, please, pretty please.”
Trouble is, I’ve spent a few hours walking the bookshelves of Barnes and Noble lately, and I know there are quite a few books on the shelf that better belong in the fiery furnace…God willing. There’s more than enough evidence out there to prove that anything can get published, given the human profit motive. Sadism, child pornography, murderers, worshipers of Satan…authors of enough darkness to make any human heart tremble.
In my heart, I know I’m never going to be able to validate God’s approval with a book contract. Given enough words, enough paper, and enough mailing envelopes, like mud, something’s bound to catch in the wheels of the machinery and end up on the New York Times “just published” list. It’s not spiritual. It’s more like a math problem of probability.
I’ve changed my prayer. I know the darkness of my heart. I’ve practiced hiding my caustic motivations in the midst of fields of verbal daisies. Only seconds after I write a scathing indictment against a former friend, I can make my face a mask of gentility. I no longer have any assurance that God approves of my writing. I tremble at the damage I might do. If anyone knows the depth of my sinfulness, without a doubt, God does!
I pray backwards today. “God, please, please, please, if any word I set on the page brings disgrace on you, clouds the grace of Jesus, and breaks a heart he came to mend, please, bury it at the bottom of the pile, hide it, burn it, trash it. Keep it from the light of day. And let me bang my head against wall after wall after wall, until I know in defeat that you have set your face against my prideful will. And more than anything, give me the grace to empty the ink from my pen in thankfulness to You.”
Amen.
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