Wednesday Wonder

We missed it!

I should have been paying better attention. We missed marking the 50^th Wednesday Wonder. This week is 61.

For me, this causes a bit of a laugh. When I started writing Wednesday Wonder (WW), I expected that it might go for a couple of months. I have tried similar types of writings in other churches and they never caught on. So, it would be a couple of months, I could say I tried it and we could all go about our days.

Not so! From the beginning, we have found a connection to one another in this little weekly offering. Your response has always been more than I expected. I feel so blessed that God provides me with something to share each week; something that resonates with at least one person each time. God’s Spirit does work in mysterious ways.

Now, there could have been more WW by now, but there was a bit of a glitch in our life together for a few months. Sometimes I feel like that glitch provided some experiences and thoughts that could fuel a few more columns. Which is perhaps a good thing since I wasn’t expecting to still need to come up with new ideas to share all these months later.

In looking back, it is obvious that these weekly offerings have allowed us to get to know one another. They have allowed us to reminisce about the way things were, the way we remember things. They have also given us an opportunity to reflect on the way things are, whether we like it or not. And, I hope, they have at times challenged us to find ways to live out our faith in our present lived experience.

Something which has come out of all this for me is the courage to do more writing in my personal life. I have often said I wanted to write a book, but never actually knew what to write. These small essays, as a friend has called them, have prompted me to see short stories, essays and the like, as a way to actually start writing what may become more. And some of the ideas are even related to my work with you. Stories about the women of the Bible which, who knows, might become a Bible study resource. OR maybe it all becomes something no else will ever see. But at least I am writing. It has always been something I wanted to do.

Years ago, in a creative writing class, the teacher would make us start every class by saying, “I am a writer.” In the beginning, few of us believed it. She kept saying even if it was only a shopping list, you wrote something this week. The longer we said it, the more often we wrote down short stories or essays, the more we started to believe it. I was reminded that if I wrote a sermon every week, then I was definitely a writer. Hadn’t really thought of it that way because I wrote to speak, not for others to read. But I did have to write it down first.

In my recent reading I found the idea that if you do something at least three times a week, it could be considered as a regular habit. And if it was a regular habit, you could identify as someone who did it. Do you run that many times a week (and I don’t mean after your grandchildren, although personally I think that should count)? Then you can tell people you are a runner. Do you swim, take a yoga class, or a painting or pottery class? Anything you do three times or more a week can be considered part of your identity. I like that idea. I can say I am a writer, because I am writing things all the time. For me to believe it, I needed to do a particular kind of writing. But I already was. Now I am just letting my inner writer loose in my spare time.

What would you like to make part of your identity? I always laugh when my dad refers to me as his preacher daughter. I only preach once a week. Or so I thought. My son reminded me that I was pretty good at preaching on days other than Sunday while he was growing up. Maybe preaching once a week doesn’t fit the above definition, but if you do it week in and week out, I think you can be called a preacher.

What do you do regularly during a week? What do you do regularly throughout the year? When we think like that we discover whole parts of ourselves that maybe we took for granted, or didn’t think were important. Everything we do is important. And everything we do honours the One who created us. When we acknowledge the fullness of who we are and what we are able to do, we continue to grow into the person God always hoped we would become.

That is something we do not want to miss out on.