I’ve got friends that are digging in every conversation, every moment for some nugget that they can preach, something they can wordsmith into a statement that makes people understand the message God has placed in them. I used to laugh, being a preacher (of sorts) myself, at us, always looking, almost shifty eyed, taking segments of conversations, cataloging, filing, making mental notes.

Writing is painful. Sometimes your thoughts get stuck at the tips of your fingers, sometimes your emotions can become so raw that your hands tremble and it’s hard to convey what your feeling or thinking. I write a lot of run on sentences, my grammar is definitely inadequate, but I have this jumble of words and deep passionate thoughts that keep me awake at night. It’s interesting and incredible that these little symbols on paper and in the middle of electronic nothing on the internet can move people to tears or make people angry. I’ve seen shifts in the way I am received by people that have read my writings. I guess you just have to roll with it. Nobody that writes because of passion does it as a leisure activity, sometimes what I write irritates me so much I have to find a quiet place to think it through and pray.

I’m not really looking for my name to be remembered as a literary icon in any degree but to persuade men and women to look deeper at Christ, and possibly to shift the thought process of people that are willing to stand or kneel for what they are believing. I say what they are believing, not what they have believed, not something written on solid granite but something that is being written and erased and modified by life and experience and study and prayer and faith, something right now.

I have stumbled onto some significant and often disturbing thoughts that have been germinating in my mind and heart. I struggle with them and hurl them down onto paper so they can be identified and compared to His words. Some I parade online and in my book that I am writing, some I shoot on sight, bury in a shallow grave and weep over.

Some of the thoughts are from God, beautiful, frightening and often haunting. Some thoughts are just my own absurdities, like thinking Spain is a chunk if ice floating in the ocean with an igloo and a penguin on it (that’s another story), or painful memories that float around in my head and heart or beautiful moments and life with love and laughter and my wife and boys. Some of the thoughts are evil, shameful and dirty. Thoughts that are so legalistic and so worldly, dancing together in the fields of my mind, ridiculously opposite so joined together, pointing and laughing at me for trying to understand grace and make an application of these foreign concepts that Jesus spoke so long ago.

I am believing in Him, though. I have always prayed that God would allow me to make some kind of contribution to His kingdom, and if He will put the thought in my head, or stir them out of my heart, I will expose them to the world. Hopefully they’re contagious.

From Smudges, As Much As I Can See So Far, by Armando Heredia