When we amaze God

I went to an art show in Pendleton last night with my friend poet Pam Steele, who has a debut novel coming out sometime later this year. I’ll keep you posted. If you live in the neighborhood you ought to make it over to Pendleton’s Art Center for the show, which runs through May. There is some wonderful work displayed. I’ve been searching for a stained glass to hang in an upstairs window for quite some time. So once the art show is over I’ll bring the above piece home. It isn’ t actually stained glass. It’s a broken glass mosaic.

You might consider it my celebratory art.

I didn’t know it then but after I returned home last night, I learned through  my friend Silas House that Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide? has been named a finalist for the Southeast Independent Booksellers Association. Y’all remember when the book was nominated?

Well, now they’ve narrowed the list and Double-Wide made the cut.

I just want to say thank you to each and everyone of you who bought a copy, read the book, and then turned around and told somebody about the book.

I received the following email last week from a reader:

Thank You! Karen, I always read your wonderful columns in the Ledger-Enquirer, but I must tell you that this latest book, WILL JESUS BUY ME A DOUBLE-WIDE? is marvelous. I enjoyed every single chapter! Please know that you are only the second author (the first was Borden Deal back in college days) to whom I have written a thank you. This book really struck a cord with me, and I’m recommending it to everyone. Thanks again, Martha Ruth Whatley Columbus, GA.

If only you all knew how incapable I feel most of the time. Do you feel that way in your lives? Like it’s ridiculous that you are doing what you do because shouldn’t somebody have recognized by now that you are hardly qualified?

I feel less like a writer and more like the person who is piecing together brokenness — my own, and others.

Creating, however we do that, is a reflection of Creator God.

It is a prayer that says I want to amaze you, God — the way you have me all these years.

That’s what I told the women at Bible Study this week — I just want to do something that leaves God gap-mouthed — in a good way. I’ve already done enough to stun Him in all the wrong ways.  I want to be like the Centurion whose faith amazed Jesus. (Luke 7)

“When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”

It helps to keep in mind that when I’m standing in front of Jesus he doesn’t see all my brokenness — he sees me as a beautiful mosaic that he’s lovingly and carefully pieced back together.

Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide? is a mosaic of sorts, a piecing together of stories of people that I think have amazed God.

Do you know such a person, such a story? Who do you know who amazes God?