Writing helps me understand God

This month I've undertaken the challenge and joined NaNoWriMo. (National Novel Writing Month) basically its a contest where you write 1600 words a day and by a month, you should have a rough draft of a novel. The operative word is "rough draft" you are going to re-write and re-write until you can't stand your novel anymore, but as Mark Twain once said: "Great novels are never written, they are only re-written"

Anyhow, I find myself amazed by God in my writing. I am having such a hard time figuring out the life of one character. From this one character spring forth other characters I must also create and understand. I am the God of my book. I create the world and its rules. I create my character with its temperaments, and I orchestrate the events which happen in their lives.

I realize there really is a plan. Before the characters came into existence they were in my imagination. Literally... before the foundations of their world, I knew them! I know my characters before they are ever born. I have a good plan for my character though I see the pain they will go through. Even the hideousness of life will be used by me to bring about beauty. Consequently I am learning that I can trust Him.

There is an old story about an encounter Tolkien had with C.S. Lewis. Lewis was once having an argument with Tolkien about God, C.S. Lewis was then an atheist. Tolkien made the following analogy. "Suppose you created a whole world in a story, you grew your characters and loved them. Supposed now that you wanted to introduce yourself to your characters? you are totally outside of their time and space. Your reality is completely separate from their reality. How would you introduce yourself to them? simply, you write yourself into the story." Tolkien was making the analogy that the only way we can know God is through the person of Jesus Christ who is God and became man like us.

I am blown away by how much I've learned about God in these past two days. Truly God is so far outside of my understanding, my reality, my realm and space that there is no way conceivable that I would know Him unless He wrote Himself into my story. He does have a master plan and I should rest in it knowing that I am part of a beautiful story. Even the darkness exists to contrast with the light. There is a hope in the fact that the master author is writing the story. He finishes on sentence, rereads it and smiles because he knows how the book is going to end.