The title of CS Lewis’ book, ‘Till We Have Faces as always been one of my favorites. This title kept coming back to me again and again as I sat at a little table in the entry way of the local Books-A-Million this past Sunday. It was my first signing and my expectations were not sure where to land. The family all came with me as we have talked about this day for years. It was our day, not my day as artists know how much a family sows into the work and what the cost has been to get the work out. I recently told some other writer friends that the world thinks we have made them richer with our words when in fact it is the conduit who has been made the richest of all. Only God could invent how this works in the life of an artist. It is not the book being out that changes you; it is the writing.
And now I find myself on the not-so-comfortable other side of writing; coming out and owning publically what you offered up, boldly engaging and ministering to the public. What seized me the most in those couple of hours were the faces. For years I prayed through the writing as much, if not more than the writing itself. Those prayers included the request that God would prepare the readers, that small enraptured audience whose heart-soil needed to be churned up to receive the humble seeds. I never had a single face in my mind–I could not even go there in my imagination as God halted that ability. But I saw the figures of the masses, faceless with arms open.
On Sunday, I was gifted to see some of those shapes be given faces. Utterly astonished to look in their eyes, this small number of women that came on purpose and that came with their own purposes. I walked out with my family in tow a bit dazed that one small pebble could start to create such ripples. It’s a new awareness for me, this passion I have always had in knowing that ideas can change the world, one word at a time, infused with the power of the Holy Spirit. Who are we that God would see our faces so well that He would know how much we long to be a part His work of restoration, of renewal? And that He would let us dig in?
I’ll keep writing. And you keep sowing what it is God has given you to return back to Him. We’ll all keep working until One Day we’ll get to see all the faces in astounding clarity and we will get to look upon The Face that formed ours.
I can’t wait.
ANGELA BLYCKER 