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Writing in the sand.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

Philip Yancey has a column in the September 2007 issue of Christianity Today that packs a powerful quote:

I find it humbling that the only time we see Jesus writing, he is using the medium of sand so that the words would soon be blown away by wind.

The column, part of the regular "The Back Page" section of the magazine, is about God's Writing Life. Yancey mentions that the handful of scenes he found in the Bible portraying God as a writer provide a continued "progression toward grace." He also notes that three of the media -- stone tablets, a plaster wall, and sand in the temple courts -- did not survive to this day.

Instead, God's literature gets passed down generation by generation in transformed lives.

Yancey then points out that the burden of creating on paper is not much compared to the works of art God creates out of human beings in this manner.

The column is not yet available online, though I wish it were so that you could read it. He has much more to say than what I am pulling out in this short post, and what I am taking from it.

The concept of "writing in the sand" has caught my imagination.

Write it, and let it go. Stop trying to write something permanent. It is one thing to write and another to want to leave a permanent mark.