Novelist A.J. Cronin had been practising as a physician for almost ten years when he developed a gastric ulcer that required complete rest. So he went to a farm in the Scottish Highlands to recuperate. He says, ‘The first few days of leisure were pleasant enough, but soon the enforced idleness of Fyne Farm became insufferable…I’d often, in the back of my mind, nursed the vague illusion that I might write. I had actually thought out the theme of a novel – the tragic record of a man’s egotism and bitter pride…Upstairs in my cold, clean bedroom was a scrubbed deal table and a very hard chair. Next morning I found myself in this chair facing a new exercise book open on the table, slowly becoming aware that, short of Latin prescriptions, I’d never composed a significant phrase in my entire life. It was a discouraging thought, as I picked up my pen. Never mind, I began.’
Even though Cronin struggled to write five hundred words a day and ended up throwing his first draft on the farm’s rubbish heap, he finished Hatter’s Castle. The book was dramatised, translated into twenty-two languages, and sold some five million copies. The world had lost a physician, but gained a novelist.
When God gives you a dream, sometimes the circumstances required to fulfil it won’t be to your liking. In Joseph’s case it involved betrayal and false imprisonment. But that’s what it took to get him to the throne of Egypt. So ask God today, ‘What are You saying, or trying to show me, in the middle of this situation?’
1 Kings 6-7, Acts 4:1-22
No comments:
Post a Comment