The same yesterday, today and forever

I hadn’t intended to write about things for which I am thankful, it seems a bit cliché since its November but that’s exactly what I am about to do.

I wasn’t able to attend the ACFW conference a couple of months ago. I had a choice: go to the conference or invest in my fellow Thistles’ first writer’s retreat. I chose the Thistles this year.

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, along with belonging to ACFW, I also belong to a local writer’s group. It’s called The Thistle Club. We chose thistles as our emblem because, among other things, they are tenacious.

Anyway, I felt a little denied this year not being able to attend ACFW’s conference but I believed that the retreat would be God’s vehicle to speak to us Thistles as His children and as writers. And you know what? It was and He did.

So, firstly, I want to thank God for showing up and spending the weekend with us. I stand amazed at how He knows exactly what we need, when we need it.

Which leads me to the next thing for which I am thankful… the blessing that is the ACFW newsletter, specifically the current edition. If you haven’t had a chance yet to read the November newsletter, I highly recommend you do.

I appreciate Michael Ehret’s notes on Bill Myers’ Second Keynote Address, because they laid the foundation for Allen Arnold’s presentation – “The Wildness of Writing with God: ‘Have fun, God.’” Arnold’s presentation was apparently a well-articulated version of what God also spoke to the Thistles during our retreat.

God is so cool.

Arnold’s definitions of the "Realms of Creativity" really hit home with me personally, and at their heart confirmed what God has been speaking to me for a while now.

So, secondly, I’m thankful to God for His timeless, and timely, Word, and to Michael Ehret for sharing his notes. If I have learned nothing else lately, it is that the writer’s life is not accomplished alone. We need God and each other if we are to finish the race God has set before us.

The greatest part about all this is that God already knew what we would need from the beginning of time and has already prepared it, we only have to ask.

Thank you, God, for being You - yesterday, today and forever.

Humbly submitted by H.T. Lord