Ensign: Twenty-Five Days To Christmas, Forgive Us When We Try To Write Ten Pages

All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye. Isaiah 18:3

AN ENSIGN ON THE MOUNTAINS 30 November 2012

WORD COUNT: 50,125

Crossed the finish line for National Novel Writing Month yesterday at 4:59 pm my time (28:16:59) and now there is a humongous load of editing to do. One thing you're encouraged to do in Nano is to “disable your inner editor” – that is, to fight the urge to go back and write what you should have or think you should have said a few pages or lines ago and change it, distracting from your forward flow. For you and I who have parts of our lives we would love to edit out (for me, this was the first twelve hours of yesterday), such a power as editing is mighty tempting. But we can't do it. We can apologize and admit we were wrong, we can make restitution, but we can't force someone to forgive us.

This past Sunday morning in church, Pastor Gerald referred to a class he failed in seminary. (Horrors!) More specifically, he failed on a paper he wrote for said class, along with his fellow students. The professor who taught this class asked his students to answer the question “What Is Truth?” and allowed them up to ten pages to do it. This took a lot of brain-racking and soul-searching on Seminarian Gerald's part, and I imagine on the rest of the class. So they turn in the assignment the day it's due, some people wrote one page, some two, some five, some people used all ten … but everybody failed. For el profesor's question was answerable in one word: “Jesus.”

Those who've even glanced at the Gospel accounts of Jesus facing Pilate (Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23, and John 18:28-40 to 19) probably recognize “What is truth?” as the question Pilate the governor of Judea asks Jesus when He's before him. Let's look for a minute at the context (it's not all, per Ms. Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, but it's a lot) of this conversation, as recorded in John 18:28-40. Pilate asks “the” question as the fifth in a series of questions, following “Art thou the King of the Jews?” (33) “Am I a Jew?” “What hast thou done?” (35) and “Art thou a king then?” (47) The analysis of these answers would likely fill this room; Jesus' answers tend to do that.

But are you and I wasting pen and paper and time trying to analyze these? Granted, it is hard if you're not a follower of Jesus as Savior and Lord (and sometimes if you are) to accept Jesus IS truth. Saying an individual is what we've been taught to accept as an abstract concept (in Bing.com's dictionary's words, “the thing that corresponds to fact or reality”) but wait … there's that word thing, so definitely not abstract. Hmm. I take a step back, and I think again. John 14:6, Jesus saying “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” NOBODY else identifies themselves this way in history; they identify as pointing to the way, showing the way, not being it!

Way = Truth = Life. I would say no, you're definitely not wasting time wrapping your head around these claims of Jesus; indeed, anyone who accepted them just because someone – indeed, a multitude of someones – said so would be someone whose faith one day will not be worth the trouble of destroying. For make no mistake, you and your faith are always vulnerable, which is why we who know Jesus as Savior and Lord don't – or shouldn't – have faith in faith. Doctrines change, opinions ferment, wars and rumors of wars, but Jesus is always Jesus. Truth is always truth. Pilate and we ask the question “what is truth” and get no answer because Truth stares at us in the face.

Next, David