Feeling and Focus Devotion

Feeling and Focus Devotion

By Susan Marlene Kinney

July 13, 2013

 

He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts…I Corinthians 4:5 

Novels offer us a small foretaste of what will come for our eternity. Those ugly motives of the antagonist and those deep dark struggles of the protagonist simmer between the pages and draw our eyes. We wonder why.

Serial killers and entrepreneurs all have motive shoving them in the back, telling them to get moving…because they care. Or maybe they are pushing the envelope because they want to feel something. And readers want to know why. Why this struggle? Will the characters make it and how? Sometimes it is a matter of why would they want to? Searching, we are always searching for how to survive and succeed.

Proverbs 16:1-2 To man belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the reply of the tongue. All a man’s ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the Lord…And so here comes that huge conflict, that neck dangling, knee dropping event that has us hanging on by a thread to each page. What matters to our character snares our hearts because somewhere deep inside we have some degree of the same struggle…or we might in the future and we’d better be prepared….

Emotions stir and simmer at the very thought…

Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn. Isaiah 51:1 b   

Family histories, nationalities, political unrest, poverty, wealth all play a part in shaping and influencing the path our feet tread. But not always to the degree we might expect. And there’s always that niggling doubt about everything having to be thus or so. Somehow somewhere someone sticks their toe over the boundary and dares to defy that black barred cage of predictability.  They step out into uncertainty and become a hero or at least they will struggle and try. That is heroic in itself. We all want the courage to face and stave off our enemies and opposition…but if we put ourselves ‘out there’ will it be worth it? Will we be foolish or strong enough or too weak? What will those coming after us think? What tragedies in our past reduce us to quiver and quake and hide?

 Or grow?

My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the King; my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer. Psalms 45:1