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But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?” … “Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” ~ Exodus 3:11, 4:10 (NASB)
The feeling that this book is supposed to be a devotional was strong, but I doubted. For several months, silent conversations took place in my head.
“Who am I to write a devotional? There are lots of devotional books already in the market, written by people much more skilled than I am.”
Don’t worry about other writers and other books. Just focus on the one you are going to write.
“Lord, my writing is simple and plain. Devotionals should be beautiful and eloquent, like the 1928 Prayer Book.”
Your book will be Finding God in the Everyday. The language and the subjects should be everyday.
“I’m sixty-eight years old—too old for something of this magnitude.”
Moses was eighty when he led the Israelites out of Egypt. Joshua was ninety when he became the leader of Israel. Noah was 600 years old when he entered the ark.
“I’ve already put a lot of time and effort into getting the book to this stage. Changing it to a devotional book will mean I have to start over.”
Yes, it does.
I talked to a writer friend and mentor. When she heard about the devotional book, she reminded of several reasons it wasn’t a good idea: The articles varied dramatically in length, from 200 words to 1200 words. A devotional book should include devotionals of a consistent length. The pieces were all about my experiences, which wasn’t appropriate for devotionals. I’d had the idea for this book nearly four years ago and had made a lot of progress on the current book. It didn’t make sense to start over and do something so different.
Yet I still had the strong feeling that I was supposed to take the book I had drafted and turn it into a devotional book.
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