April 4, 2024 - Good Morning! It's Thursday, April 4.
Have you seen the historical documentaries by Ken Burns on PBS? He's the director who gave us the series on The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, and other distinctly American subjects. He really makes history come alive. Lately, I've been rewatching His documentary on the writer Ernest Hemingway. After Mark Twain and Harper Lee, Hemingway is my favorite American writer. He has a memorable quote about the art of writing - "Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit down at a typewriter, and bleed." You and I have access to all the words that were available to Ernest Hemingway. All we have to do is buy a cheap dictionary. But, somehow, he was inspired to fashion those words into something unique, something beautiful, something lasting, something true.
I'm fascinated by the subject of inspiration. If you look that word up in that dictionary of yours, you'll find many definitions - creativity, inventiveness, ingenuity, vision, imagination, originality, innovation - just to name a few. But none of these exactly defines inspiration. The word inspiration comes from the Greek word "theopneustos", which literally means "God breathed". It is the word that we find in 2 Timothy 3:16 (one of many notable 3:16verses - an interesting DIY Bible study, by the way). Paul writes to a young friend - "All scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness."
So, just as God breathed life into Adam in the Garden, and just as He breathed the Holy Spirit into His disciples on Pentecost Sunday, God breathed into His Word. And His Word continues to teach, rebuke, correct, train, and yes . . . inspire!
Meet you back here tomorrow,
Bro. David
dmathis@fbccenter.org
