Highlighting Our Mistakes
Bonus Article + Giveaway Winner
I was reading through an old journal this morning, the kind that begins with three perfectly presented pages. I couldn’t disturb the sanctity of the others, as they’re filled to the brim with possibilities. I was glancing past the three year old to-do lists and the doodles that must have meant something once upon a time, when my eyes fell upon a curiosity. I use my highlighters more liberally than most. Apparently more so than I thought though. Mid-paragraph, I’d changed course and decided to delete a couple of words. Backspace. Backspace.
Funny to think how messy mistakes were pre word processors.
Instead of covering up the scrawls—using tipp-ex or tape—I’d taken my brightest highlighter, in my favourite colour, and neatly presented the chaos. As a result, the surrounding paragraph said less to me this morning than these haphazard scratches.
Last Week at the Raven’s Writing Desk:
I made some mistakes last week. I think I may have even made some the week before. How about you? Do you recall?
I bet you do.
In fact, I think we tend to remember those parts of our lives far more accurately than our successes. They remain with us. What if instead of reliving our mistakes, we repented of them?
The enemy would love to keep you going round and round in circles.
The Lord wants to highlight your mistake, to point it out clearly in the paragraphs of your life, and scratch it out before your eyes. When you reread it now, it’ll be a poignant moment in that chapter your life. The moment you walked back.
Giveaway Winner
Congratulations Justin Allison for winning this giveaway, I’ll be in touch shortly!
Great Media to Check Out This Week
Yesterday, I tweeted about politics for the first time in a while. It isn’t to say that I’m not a political person, just that I tend to keep my views between myself and some close family members. In this piece, Jen Pollock Michel (A Habit Called Faith) helps us to think through how we situate politics in our lives, especially in the spheres of writing and reading. If you’re reading this then you’ve likely already voted this year—aside from the couple of you from Ghana!—and so now might be a good time to think this through for yourself.
Jake—his heart having been illuminated by the word of God—has become enamoured with the subject of light in the Bible over the past couple of years. Let there be light. See the light. Be the light. Let the light shine. Never cover it. There are so many ways the Bible uses light to help us see. Check out The Workbox this week for more.
What would you do if you stumbled upon a gap in history’s collective memory. Daniel Gilman found himself wrestling with that very question as he uncovered a nameless figure in the abolitionist movement. Knowing that her seismic presence could not continue to go unnoticed, Daniel began researching and writing. Academic journal articles rarely contain tales of former slaves, spies, and secret identities. This is one of the few. Join Daniel on his journey through London's debating societies, and the political and cultural landscape of the late 18th Century.
It will be well worth your time:
Thank you for the encouraging reminder!
Need to add some quotes to my commonplace book after reading this.