Keeping that Focus

by Pamela Heemskerk

Courtesy of  luigi diamanti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’ve been through three computers in the last three months - enough to make any writer remove their hair in handfuls!! So I’ve turned on today and gone back through the last few CWD blogs. And I am blessed to know so many people who write from the heart in ways that have changed my life. Thank you.

I know many who had a difficult 2016 – my annus horribilis was 2015.   So last year I was confronted with all the baggage from the year before. (Such fun!) My relationship with God deepened last year, and He gently and persistently placed my reactions, thoughts and feelings from 2015 to the forefront of my life to sort them through from His perspective.

He showed me where I reacted out of fear and failed to trust Him – fear undermines our belief in God’s sovereignty. He showed me where I had harboured anger and resentment; where I’d clung to my position of ‘I’m right and you’re wrong’. But most of all, He showed me where I had lost my focus on Him. Instead, I had focussed on all the issues surrounding me and on trying to solve them.

You see, our Father has a goal – to make us into the image of His Son, so that we reflect His holy and loving nature to the world. Our lives become the story of His goodness, mercy and power working through us. He will do whatever it takes to strip away anything that detracts from this goal of changing us to be like Him.

The one thing that will most effectively accomplish this change is our deliberate and sustained focus on His Person through worship, prayer, reading, meditation. Even when we don’t want to.

So 2016 for me, was a year of cleaning out and of changing focus. When we focus on the things that bother us, it shifts our focus off God and His purposes, and onto ourselves. It ‘muddies the waters’ and we cannot see where we are meant to be heading.  When our focus shifts back onto worship, it changes our perspective. The ‘big issues’ become little in the light of God’s glory.

So how does this apply to writing?

As God’s royal priesthood, we reflect His nature to the world in our lives and our writing. We have a goal, a focus for our words. We want to convey something clearly to our readers. Our editors, beta readers and writing friends can often see where we’re straying away from our goal. They help us to clean-up and restore focus.  No detours, no distractions, no red herrings – just good writing with a clear end-point. Part of our walk towards perfection.

Pamela is a non-fiction writer who has had a number of short pieces published. Her booklet on hearing loss – Rather a Small Chicken…A guide to hearing loss for family and friends - was launched last year, and she is now on a (slow) journey of discovery into the marketing world.

Blog – pgheemskerk@blogspot.com.au

Email – pgheemskerk1@gmail.com