A PENCIL ILLUSTRATION

Hello! To explain my desire for my writing forever glorifying God, and not me, I would like to talk about a pencil in a brief illustrative analogy I invented some months ago. (Need a quick skim of what this is about? Click here!) Here it is.

As you all should know, this here is a pencil.

There is nothing very amazing or extraordinary about this pencil; if anything, it can be said that it has - oh, miracle - an eraser.  Wow!  An eraser!  Most pencils have erasers, for your information.  This one is just like every other pencil out there, (except that some are emblazoned with green lettering: TICANDEROGA).  Just an ordinary, plain old pencil.

Now let me ask you a question:  Could this pencil do anything of its own accord?  Could it write without a hand holding it up and guiding it constantly?  Is it useful if it isn't being held up and guided so that it can write (or erase what it has written)?

What do you think?

Personally - I daresay I speak for most everyone in the world - I believe the answer to all of these questions is NO.

Now, picture this.  A boy is assigned, for school homework, to write an essay - perhaps a poem about nature.  Yes, that's good - lots of aesthetic words can be used to describe nature.  A boy is assigned for school homework to write a poem about nature.

His mind seething with ideas, he dashes home, pulls out a fresh piece of lined paper from his binder, readies his pencil, and writes.  And writes.  And writes.  All going according to his plans - his ideas - the ones which were seething within his brain the long-but-seemingly-short walk home.

The next day he returns to school, submits his poem, and waits happily for the time in which each student reads aloud his or her poem.

The time comes.  The teacher hands back the poems, and then the boy stands up and reads his aloud.  It is so beautiful - so magnificent - so wonderfully worded and crafted, enlivened with such fluent meter and flawless rhymes, that even his other classmates, who want their own poems to get the best marks and not his, are in awe.  When he is finished, he sits down.

There is a pause.

And then the class scrambles out of its seats and gathers around his pencil, holding it high and admiring it, studying its sleek yellow curves, its perfect pink eraser, its sharp point of gray lead.  And they praise it for having - literally - written the poem.  Even the teacher starts to worship it.  Not a single utterance of acknowledgment, not an ounce of credit, not an iota of recognition, is bestowed upon the boy, who sits, rather excluded from the bubbly group.

Is there something wrong with this scene?  Yes, as a matter of fact there is.  The class admires the pencil because it, literally, is the one who did the actual writing of the poem - the one whose lead was pressed against the paper so the outcome was the curves and lines of the letters of the words of the sentences that made up the poem.  No thought is given to the actual author; he employed the pencil as a tool to help him carry out his plans for and write the poem, but the poem was his, not the pencil's.  Why should the pencil be given all the praise?

Back to my point.  My point is this: I should not be given the glory for the writing of this blog, nor for anything I do.  Everything I write is not my own; it is of completely God's ideas, which He, in his amazing, benevolent grace, gifted me with so that I might do the literal writing.  Like the pencil, I might be prone to the admiration of my fellow human beings - anybody would be.  But I simply did the literal writing of things; the ideas were not mine, they were God's, He is the true author and deserves the real respect and praise . . . for this blog, and for everything. So may He receive it.  May you see, through this blog, that He is the King of all.

Thank you.