Day 2: Words of life

Every day you are surrounded by words. More accurately, you are bombarded by words.

From the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep, words assail you from everywhere. With blurry eyes, many of us begin the day by checking text messages, news, or sports一all comprised of words. Instinctively, you start scrolling on your phone, reading captions, leaving comments, watching videos. You turn on the radio or Spotify or Audible, welcoming the thoughts of others into your heart and mind. Words fill every interaction with your family, roommates, friends, and coworkers. Marketers estimate that every day you see 10,000 ads.

When you tally it up, our daily word intake is overwhelming. Information fatigue is a real thing. If you think about your attention span like a cup, once it’s full, everything else just spills over the side. You can only take in so much.

As a writer, the question is: What are you filling your cup with? Who are you listening to?

As writers who follow Jesus, there is an undeniable connection between the words we take in and the words we pour out. To write compellingly, our souls must be regularly nourished by Jesus’s life-giving teaching. Rich prose never pours from a dry fountain. On the contrary, the best thing for your wordcraft is to saturate in biblical wisdom.

Like our noisy world, Jesus’s first disciples lived in a world of scattered messages. On one occasion, after many disciples decided to abandon Jesus, Peter utters this remarkable phrase: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68).

Hone in on that last sentence: You have the words of eternal life.

Only Jesus’s words give life. Only his words tell the truth. It’s so easy to be distracted by the noise of life, but for the health of your soul and the richness of your writing, cultivate the habit of sitting at Jesus’s feet, listening to his wisdom. Allow his words of life to pour into you. Remove distractions.

On most days, with busy schedules pressing in, this feels daunting. But as writers who relentlessly hunt for deep words that unleash good in this world, where else can we go to find them, apart from Jesus our King?

Ask yourself: Does my daily consumption of words make me a better writer, or does it distract me from my calling?

Prayer: Lord, teach me to consume and cherish your words more than all others. Protect me from the daily barrage of messages that distract me from who you are, and who you’ve called me to be. I commit to filling myself with your truth, that it might overflow into my own writing. Fill me with your Spirit, so that my words will point readers to you. In Jesus’s name, Amen.