Are you a writer?

If so, could you imagine having your poem selected, your short story, the song you wrote, your travelogue… chosen for publication? Imagine how it would feel to have your work selected for publication in… the Bible?

The scripture writers couldn’t have had any sense at all of what might become of their work. They wrote letters or poetry or narratives for an audience and with a purpose certainly, but for their words to someday be included in the most popular book of all time and to be considered sacred? Wow.

Could you imagine being a scripture writer yourself? Well, you don’t have to imagine it…

But first, I want to say that if your idea of a gourmet meal is a microwaved frozen dinner or a bag of salad you can buy at a grocery store, then I am a master chef! But if your tastes run finer and are more demanding than that, then you do not want me cooking anything for you. I am not a good cook. I can follow a recipe as long as it’s fairly straightforward. Just give me a solid set of instructions, a blueprint… and I’ll be fine. But I am not a good cook. The good cooks that I know will follow a recipe… but they vary from it, adjust as needed. They experiment, season to taste, add or subtract ingredients, and take risks. That is what makes them good.

I bring this up because many people view the Bible as a recipe, a blueprint. They are right about that… but if you view it in the same way that I do cooking, I believe you’ll never be a “good cook”. That’s because the Bible is more than something that is two dimensional. There is great clarity in there but you have to mull over the words and messages and try to understand what they mean within the context of your life and experiences.

When I was in the diaconate program, I had an assignment in one class that left a great impression on me. The assignment was simple, it seemed: write about the great mystery, eternity, divinity, and something which can never be fully grasped by the human mind… using simple, understandable words and expressions. Sounds simple but it wasn’t. After we passed in our papers, the professor reminded us that this was precisely the task of the scripture writers.

So… how would you like to be a scripture writer?

Think about the Holy Trinity. The Old Testament of the Bible is all about the Father. The New Testament is about the Son. But what about the Holy Spirit? Doesn’t the Holy Spirit get a Testament? Isn’t there going to be any sacred scripture about the Holy Spirit? Well, that’s where we come in. The Holy Spirit was a gift from the Father and the Son… for us. For you. For me. For us.

If there are ever going to be simple words and expressions to describe the great mystery, eternity, divinity, and something that can never be fully grasped by the human mind when it comes to the gift of the Holy Spirit, then we have to write them. Unfortunately, there’s no cookbook recipe, no simple blueprint that is easy to follow in order to accomplish this task. We have to learn how to become good cooks here. By experimenting. By using instinct. By trying. And in doing so, we learn, we experience, we relate, and we grow. This is a manuscript we have to write, even if we never put actual words onto a page. The words are our lives, our actions, how we relate to each other, our commitment, and what we someday leave behind.

What we someday leave behind is the Final Testament. It’s Our Testament. We write it and if it’s any good, it will be published. And it will be sacred.