From This Moment Forward

Writers tend to favor one of two sides: either we can’t stand to hurt our babies, or we take disturbing delight in killing off characters and making things go wrong.

We also experience the extraordinary power and knowledge of being a creator over a story world. Before you freak out that I’m trying to make writers out to be some sort of story gods, I’m not. What we are doing, though, is accepting God’s invitation and calling to live and act in His image. We get to come alongside Him and become little creators in the image of the One Creator. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s cool.

As mini creators, we get to see the whole picture. We get to know the plans and end behind the difficult things we put in our stories. And though we’ll never fully understand the mind of God, having that “creator perspective” helps us remember we’re in His story, He knows the end, and He has a plan to use the hard things to make the ending more beautiful.

Let me point out one important difference between God and us (though there are many). While we may laugh cynically as we kill off a character on paper, God never hangs over us cackling when hard things come into our lives. He uses them to grow us, but He also hurts with us through it.

In mid-August, my pastor did a small sermon series on the story about Jesus raising Jairus’ daughter. If you aren’t familiar with the story, let me sum up.

A man named Jairus, a ruler in the local community center/place of worship had a 12-year-old daughter who was dying. He left her to go find this Man named Jesus (who most of the religious leaders hated because of His growing popularity). Going to Jesus would mean that Jairus could potentially be kicked out of his position, the worship place, and the center of his community. But he went to Jesus, because he had heard that He had a track record of healing people with a simple word or touch.

Jairus shoved his way through the crowds that swamped Jesus, fell on his face, and begged Jesus to come heal his daughter. Jesus said yes and started following Jairus home.

Interruption. Someone touched Jesus. Jesus stopped, turned around, and asked, “Who touched Me?”

Jairus was probably thinking, who cares? Let’s go; we don’t have time.

The crowd said they didn’t, and one of His buddies, Peter, said, “C’mon, for real? The people are packed around You, and You want to know who touched You?”

“Someone touched Me, because My power went out of Me.” Jesus fixed His gaze on a lady in the crowd. He knew who it was. He knew it was her.

Her gaze locked with His, and she tried to pull away, but she knew it was too late. She knew He knew. She came forward, trembling, and told everyone she’d been an unclean, chronic, bleeding outcast for twelve years. She thought that if she just touched Jesus, she’d be healed. So, she tried it. And…she was. Her bleeding stopped.

Jesus told her well done for her faith and belief in Him. While He was still talking, someone from Jairus’ house pushed through the crowd, his face saying too much.

“Don’t harass Jesus anymore, Jairus,” the man said. “She’s dead.”

Dead. Jairus just watched a woman be healed, but his daughter died? If Jesus hadn’t stopped, they might’ve been in time. Jairus would have done better to stay home; at least he would’ve been there. It wasn’t fair. Jesus was going with Jairus, but this outcast stopped Him.

“Jairus,” Jesus looked at him, a deep understanding in His eyes. “Don’t start fearing. Start believing from this moment forward.”

What? It was too late to start believing anything. She was dead.

But Jairus believed. He took Jesus to his house anyway. He trusted the Author. He trusted there was more to the story, even when it felt like the end. And you know what? Jesus brought his daughter back to life.

Okay…bear with me a little longer. We don’t know all of Jairus’ thoughts after he heard that his daughter had died. But we’re writers. We can imagine, right? His daughter just died, after a delay because of some socially outcast woman. We can imagine the fear, despair, and maybe even anger begin to creep in.

But Jesus doesn’t give Jairus the chance to speak. He speaks first. The coolest part of that story is what He says to Jairus. The way I wrote it isn’t the way it appears in our Bibles, but it is the way the original text was grammatically written. “Don’t start fearing. Start believing from this moment forward.”

Okay, so how does all this mesh together?

When we write, we make bad things happen to our characters, but…do we make it The End? Do the readers really see no hope? Do the characters push, shove, grope, and exhaust themselves, proving there is no way out of the situation? Do we let a woman and her happy story ruin everything and make ours that much more painful? Do we make the circumstance dead? Motionless, ashen, and beginning to stink in the heat?

We should. Because that’s when the story gets good. That’s when we get to test our characters. That’s when we ask them to trust us, to believe, starting from this moment forward. This moment.

“This hole, this hopeless place, this place where all is dead…this is the place where I want you to start believing me from—and keep believing.”

I’m not saying to literally raise dead characters back to life. But I am saying to have your characters persevere, to move forward in the hopeless, to push past what seems like the utter end so that they can break through into the amazement of the other side of the pain.

It asks the readers if they’ll start believing, having confidence, from this moment forward in their lives. It shows that it’s never too late to look for hope.

That’s the power of story. We get to make miracles when we bring hope back to life. We get to show readers there is water in the desert, peace amid the raging, foaming waves, and life on the other side of death. We get to be spinners of light in the dark. We get to be authors.

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“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you until it seems that you cannot hold on for a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time when the tide will turn.” - Harriet Beecher Stowe

Where is the “from this moment” in your story?

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