Marcia Laycock is a pastor's wife and mother of three grown daughters. She was the winner of The Best New Canadian Christian Author Award for her novel, One Smooth Stone, and has published two devotional books, Spur of the Moment, and Focused Reflections. Visit her website - http://www.vinemarc.com/
Writing is a lot of hard work, but sometimes, it’s a lot of fun. Writing a scene from every point of view, for instance, can be fun and enlightening. The exercise also deepens your own understanding of what’s going on in that scene. When you see, feel and hear from the perspective of one character, then rewrite the scene from the point of view of another, you are able to create a scene that is more real, with dialogue that works and body language that is significant. To write well it helps to get inside the skin of each character.
It could be said that to live well, you have to do the same. We’ve all heard the axiom about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. Jesus said something even more profound and more difficult. He said, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you” (John 15:12).
Jesus walked more than a mile in our shoes. He lived a life as one of us; then He took all our sins upon Himself and went to the cross for us. His idea of love was to sacrifice His place in heaven to experience the pain and suffering of humanity. His idea of love was to suffer humiliation and death.
How can He expect us to do the same?
He expects it because He has shown us how to do it and given us all we need to accomplish it. It is not by our own virtue that we are able to love others, not by our own will that we extend the hand of friendship to those who act like our enemies. It is in God’s strength, through His righteousness, by His Spirit, that we are enabled.
When we accept the love of Christ extended to us, it flows through us. Then and only then can we extend His grace, be His hands and feet, and love others as He loved us. It is then and only then that we can say, with Christ, “Not my will, but thine.”
Good words, Marcia. Thank you.
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