Some people approach faith as if it were a pool of unknown temperature. They hover at the edge of the pool, uncertain about getting in as far as the first step. As the water laps against their ankles, they acclimate before moving down another step into the calf-deep water. Then knee-deep.

And that’s as far as some ever go. “I’m fine here. You go on and have fun.”

Hugging themselves (lot of good that does) they shiver because their feet are in the water but their body is exposed to the air.

“Let me just get used to it,” they say. Some never do.

Their friends, exhausted from the fun, the splashing, the diving, are packing their things to go Home by the time the timid ones feel confident to go waist-deep, shoulder-deep, get their hair wet.

Let’s grab the faith-timid by the hand and urge them deeper. “Come on in. The water’s fine!”

For writers: Pushing from behind rarely is appreciated. In some ways, it’s rude, bully-like. How can our words more effectively “pull” with “strong cords of love,” as God says He does in His Word?

For readers: Have you been encouraged to dive deeper into your relationship with the Lord but have hesitated at the edge of the pool? Dive right in! Even if the water temp surprises you, you’ll find it infinitely soul-refreshing!

Some birds blend into the background. Sparrows. Wrens. Female cardinals.

But some always startle. Goldfinches. Indigo buntings. Baltimore Orioles. Male cardinals.

And bluebirds.

Driving through the midsummer Midwest countryside, a flash of that distinctive Microsoft blue flitted at the side of the road. In the ditch.

“What is the bluebird of happiness doing in a ditch?” I asked before I thought about the implications.

That’s where some people’s bluebirds of happiness hover.

My empathy quotient spiked. People all around me are trying to make it through life with their happiness factor flopping around in the weeds along the edge of the road.

That’s not where bluebirds are supposed to linger. They’re not ground-dwellers. And neither are we. We were created to soar.

For writers: No matter what genre you write, does it offer hope? Even if it explores the litter along the side of the road, is there a flash of hope?

For readers: I wonder if God would want to rewrite the “pursuit of happiness” portion of our country’s early documents. What if it read, “and the pursuit of holiness coupled with the pursuit of the happiness of others”? Now, wouldn’t that be an interesting quest? And wouldn’t that make it more likely we could stay airborne?

She poured her heart into the phone. “I’m no longer needed. By anyone. What’s the point of living anymore?”

Not needed? How could she think that? And how could she think her perception of unnecessary meant her life was disposable?

She’d applied for jobs and wasn’t hired. She’d volunteered and “run out” of places to help.

In this world? She’d run out of places to help?

Misperception. She’d served many over the years, and continued to; had given much, and continued to give. But she couldn’t “see” that her efforts meant anything to anyone.

How had she spent her week? She’d hired a couple of young men to tear down an old outbuilding, not because she needed it torn down but because the men needed work.

She’d put a check in the mail to a ministry because she’d felt moved to do so.

Only heaven knows how many people she’d blessed with slips and snips from her gardens. A word of encouragement here. A word there.

It takes faith to believe that our obedience to God’s call to bless others, however unnoticed by those around us and unimportant in our own eyes, is noticed by God. We believe we matter not because we feel as if we do or have seen evidence, but by faith in the God who SAID we matter to Him.

For writers: Have you silently measured your worth by royalties or lack of them? By reader mail? By awards and recognition? What if they all ceased? Does the world need your words or your obedience to His words?

For readers: Life has two seasons–when we’re overneeded and when we’re underneeded. Both seasons require the exercise of faith. It’s not evidence that tells us we matter, that our efforts are noticed. This is a job for faith.

John Mason wrote, “You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.”

Profound, isn’t it?

The memorable are not those who are “just like” somebody else, but those who stand out in significant, even if small ways.

An unsuccessful author is the one who wants to write exactly like John Grisham. We already have one of those. Don’t need a copy.

A successful author might write John Grisham-ish novels but from the perspective of the judge. Or the courtroom janitor.

Readers aren’t looking for another book “just like” The Secret Life of Bees. They’re looking for one that evokes the same emotions but in a different setting with different characters facing different conflicts.

The Lord isn’t looking for me to turn out “just like” my pastor’s wife or “just like” my best friend or “just like” Beth Moore. He hand-turned each of us. Hand-molded. Built each of us from scratch, not from a rubberized mold.

We share commonalities. But He created us uniquely…down to our very DNA, which when you think about it speaks volumes to the importance He places on our NOT being exactly like anyone else.

How much time do we waste trying to look like, sound like, write like, pray like someone else?

We were born originals. May we not end life a mere copy.

Except in one respect. My longing is that when life is over, people will call me a Jesus Copycat.

For writers: What is it about your writing that distinguishes it from that of your favorite authors, the ones you long to emulate? Is that distinguishing mark clear enough for readers and editors to find significant? Significantly wonderful?

For readers: New photocopiers pride themselves on making copies that are practically indistinguishable from the original. What in your life is growing closer to an exact duplicate of a character trait of Jesus? Your quickness to obey? Your compassion? Your giving spirit? Your surrender to the will of the Father? It’s something to think about.

It’s the little things that make us crazy–like getting a parking ticket after exiting the clinic where we were just told the chemo isn’t working.

Like the smudge on our slacks after having to change a tire in rush hour traffic and missing an important interview.

Like a mosquito in the tent on an otherwise great camp out. A mosquito with cousins who like to party.

It’s the little things that make us crazy…and the little things that stir our hearts.

Yesterday my pulse quickened over one small detail in the story of the Prodigal Son from the Bible. After he’d wasted the early inheritance he begged off his dad and fallen about as low as possible into life’s gutter, the prodigal returned home–guilt-ridden and repentant–in hopes of serving as one of his father’s hired men.

We know the father ran out to meet his boy. We know all about the party the father threw to welcome his son home. We know the dad acted with such overt love and forgiveness that he set a God-like standard for both.

But I got to wondering–as writers and Jesus followers often do–about a tiny detail.

The dad wrapped his coat around the boy. Why?

Theologians can speculate. Biblical historians have their theories. So do those with imaginations.

Maybe the boy was cold.

Maybe the coat was a sign of honor. As low as the slug of a son sank, still the father reached out to honor him by dressing him in the equivalent of a royal robe.

Maybe the dad used it to drive home the lesson that all he possessed belonged to the son, and always would. Maybe to prove his point, the dad solemnly removed his own coat and wrapped it around the fallen one.

Maybe the young man had lost such a totality of “everything” that he was practically naked, and the father covered him, covered his shame, with his own robe of righteousness.

Maybe all of the above.

What a picture of the Father’s love for us! Naked and poor and stupid and guilty and spent, we crawl toward Him. Not only does He run to meet us, He wraps us in honor, in forgiveness, in warmth, protection, His own robe of righteousness, a garment that marks us as His, one that tells us and the watching world that all He has is ours.

For writers: Have you made dumb mistakes in your writing? Have you sought honor prematurely or chased after wrong motives or lost sight of His purposes for you and come crawling back to the feet of the Author of your faith? You don’t have to wonder what His response will be. Feel it? His own robe of forgiveness and His whisper, “Welcome back. Let’s try that again.”

For readers: Ditto. Have you made dumb mistakes…? Have you felt the welcome weight of fabric over your shoulders? Have you heard His whispers? What seemingly small detail from God’s Word has stirred your heart lately? I’d love to hear about it.

The artistry of this photo appeals to my heart, but its draw is deeper than mere appreciation for the colors and light and composition. It moves me that the two flowerheads on thin stems are bent toward one another.

It speaks of a secret God embedded in His Creation and His creatures. If the individuals stand stick-straight, their symmetry might impress. But the picture tells a sweet story when they lean in, toward one another, toward Him.

For writers: When the writing gets tough, painful to pursue, when a scene is too close to the heart to write without peeling off the outer layers to reveal the raw truth about our characters and ourselves, lean in. Lean into the pain to write more authentically. Lean into the Lord to write with Hope.

For readers: Does something threaten to stiffen the stems of a relationship you share with a friend or family member? Lean in. See if it doesn’t make art of the scene.

Automatic doors are a wonder, aren’t they? A camera eye senses when someone draws near and signals to the door mechanism to open and allow entrance. Then with a soft-spoken “whoosh,” the door closes.

“Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you,” the Bible tells us. The working out of that promise is sometimes like automatic doors, though. Not the kind with a door knob.

In His wisdom, God operates the automatic door from His unseen position high above the scene. No matter how many doors we’ve pounded on, how many doorbells we’ve rung, how many times we’ve thumped a shoulder against an immoveable wooden door, we can’t seem to find entrance to our dreams.

But the Lord–knowing better than we do where we need to go and which dreams are worth pursuing–waits and watches. When we draw close to the “right” one, He nods and the door opens automatically before us.

For safety reasons, at our local airport, one set of half-circle curved automatic doors open to a person exiting the plane and heading for baggage claim. That set is sealed again before the next set in front of the traveler opens.

That, too, is reminiscent of the way the Lord often works with His children. For their safety, He opens a set of doors, then asks His follower to wait until that door closes behind, sealing him off from the past, before opening the next set of doors to the future.

For writers: Although we’re responsible to keep knocking on doors in our writing pursuits, we can be assured that when we near the “right” door, from God’s perspective, it will open before us.

For readers: Do you feel that every door you try (in relationships, career, even spiritually) seems locked and barred? Are you frustrated that nothing seems to fall into place for you? If you allow Him control of your life, the doors WILL open. And it won’t be because of how brilliant you are or how you muscled the door open, but because the God who loves you is watching. When you get close to the right door, you won’t have to push against it. It will open wide to allow you to walk through.

I long ago graduated from to-do lists written on snippets of paper or on sticky notes. I’m using whiteboards now. Color-coordinated. My life is a glorious tangle of responsibilities and delights, challenges and heart-thumping joys. I write and produce a daily radio broadcast, two monthly columns (one for an ezine, another for a newspaper), create and submit and sometimes publish magazine articles, teach at writers’ conferences, love on my grandbabies, serve on the worship team at church, watch for ways to bless my kids and my husband, do freelance editing, care for my mom who can see the end from here, write novels, prepare and edit online devotionals, and serve as the president of the 1900-member American Christian Fiction Writers corporation.

Whew. Let me catch my breath!

What makes it all work is that my responsibilities dovetail. The God I serve is a wise economist. He wastes nothing. A devotional idea becomes a radio script which holds a word of encouragement for an online friend who recommends an editing project that puts me in touch with a new magazine resource I hadn’t discovered yet which gives me another idea for a devotional…

I realize I’m wired in a way that would cause wrinkles in Thomas Edison’s spine. But I survive because it’s all entwined.

And I survive life itself because mine is entwined with the Lord’s. “In Him I live and move and have my being,” is the way the Bible describes it.

It is immensely comforting to know that if I hurt, He feels it. If I dance, He leads. Any compassion I feel is a reflection of His own. When I love well, He smiles. When I sin, we’re both sickened. If I’m rocked by a turn of events, He…Rocks. I’m traveling life as if He and I are partners in a three-legged race.

And we do just fine…when I let Him lead.

For writers: Everything we experience along the path to publication is entwined with God’s divine will for our writing. Even the disappointments. They’re inexorably linked to the victories and advances (both meanings of that word). Entwined and entangled are tango partners, though. And the Word of God is clear that we can become easily entangled and fall out of step with His will for our writing careers.

For readers: Linking arms with the Lord infuses us with strength and stamina as we face our daily challenges, even those as simple as unruly to-do lists. May it renew your courage to see how intertwined are the many responsibilities you’ve been handed or assigned. Is there a common thread? Is it encouragement? Serving? Wisdom? Creativity? Worship? Children? Whatever that common thread, consider that it may offer hope that your life isn’t just busy. It is a delicately woven entwining of your gifts and opportunities with His power and selfless love. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to take another look at my whiteboards of to-do lists and trace His Hand upon it all.

Ponder the shining moments, holding onto them like stored battery power for the dark days. Get a firm grip on the hope that what you see is just the middle, not the end of the story, when God is involved.