The Joy of life is God, Family, and Books. And, of course, Dragons.
Author: wordworkerrussell
I'm a homeschool mom of five, three girls and two boys. I'm a daughter of the King who works hard to keep her family living as close to God as we can. God created a world perfectly designed to provide everything we need, and designed us to reflect Him throughout it.
Writing is my happy place. I have always loved stories and words because they express the human spirit so beautifully. A story can speak many messages, each received by the reader as needed or understood by individual experiences. I hope that my stories, both true and fantasy, speak to you in some way.
For generations the bell had rung morning and night, its peals joining the crashing waves in a symphony of sound. The five peaks of the landside bore the code for its messages. Fair weather, foul, days of worship, and days of mourning. The fifth mark, on the center peak, had long been ignored by the island folk, its meaning lost in the passage of years. The bellringer would learn his day’s duty by noting under which of the other four peaks the mission opened its doors at dawn.
When Ambros arrived to ring the bells as the sun rose in a cloudless sky, he stopped short, staring at the light streaming out of the center door. His eyes went to the symbol above it, incomprehensible to him, and his knees trembled. The crescent gleamed white, much brighter than the other four symbols, and an overwhelming urge to flee flooded him.
The lack of the morning bell would likely send the island into a greater tumult than a new message, however. Ambros gulped and forced himself forward, hoping that the dusty old bellringer’s manual would decipher the symbol. When he stepped through the door, the light went out, and the glowing mark above swelled to blend with the deep red of the sunrise. The bell tolled of its own accord, a single deep hollow tone, and the island sank beneath a calm sea.
The story of Abraham and Lot is well known to many. When the herds grew too large to be supported together, Lot moved to the green river valley while Abraham continued to travel in the wilder, less fertile areas. There’s more to this story, however, that we should take the time to consider.
Abraham, in the culture of the time period, was head of the clan. Although Lot had his own household, he still lived under the authority of his uncle. Probably the closest comparison in our western culture would be the mayor of a small town, although theirs would have been a town composed of family and their employees. When the need for separation arose, Abraham had the right to rule as judge on the future of both his and Lot’s households. He could quite easily have ordered Lot to take his herds in any direction, ensured that Lot’s future took an approved form.
Instead, Abraham gave Lot not only a choice, but the first choice. Given the types of choices we see the younger man making after this moment, it’s likely that Abraham knew Lot’s penchant for bad decisions, but he still respected Lot’s need to choose. The reputation of the inhabitants of the river valley was well known and Abraham must have worried a great deal about the outcome of his nephew’s choice, but he knew that choice was out of his control.
We live in a society full of people trying to make other people’s choices for them. Each is convinced that his or her own choices are the right ones. If we didn’t think our own choices were right, we wouldn’t have made them, so this attitude is not a negative trait. It’s how we were designed. The problem only arises when we forget the simple fact that every other individual was designed the same way.
Abraham could not stop Lot from making the wrong choice. By doing so he would have denied God’s design of free will, of individual responsibility to choose. I’m sure, like all who have raised children to adulthood, he agonized and prayed for Lot’s heart to be more eternally focused. We know that he did his best to provide opportunities for his nephew to redirect; he even went so far as to raise an army to rescue Lot from being the spoils of war. When God made the decision to destroy the cities of the valley for their hardened rebellion, Abraham pleaded for Lot’s life despite all his nephew’s mistakes. But not once did he run in and drag Lot away or take control of his life.
Abraham recognized something that many of us have forgotten. Every choice carries its own consequence. God designed humans to learn through our choices. For example, if we touch something hot, it burns, and we learn not to touch hot things. No parent wants to see their child in pain, so often we go out of our way to prevent our little ones from the possibility of touching hot things. Sadly, our efforts fail, because ultimately choice is impossible to deny. Ingenuity and determination will only strengthen until the burn has been experienced and the lesson learned.
Abraham trusted God’s design of His children more than he trusted his own choices to be the right ones. Abraham had seen God use his own bad choices to teach him, help him grow into a stronger relationship with the Creator. Abraham had the faith to know that the God who created the free will of humans knew how to show Himself to us even through our poorest choices.
Free will, the responsibility of each for our own choices, is a frightening reality to accept. It requires accepting true individuality, the absolute certainty that every other person in the world will make choices that are different from ours. It requires accepting that every person in the world will make both right and wrong choices. Even more importantly, accepting free will requires the recognition that as a person my own choices will certainly not always be good ones. Free will requires faith in the One who created it. It requires certainty that He is greater than any human choice, and can use even our worst choices to call us closer to Him. Indeed, He already has.
Isaiah 53:7 (CSB): He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughter and like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth.
Luke 23:34 (CSB): Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.”
It was a strange place for a school, high in the Alps where the crags rose so steeply that the chateau stuck out of the mountainside like a hitchhiker’s thumb. Telian was sure the founders had been goats; no one else would have thought all these stairs would be a good idea. And, on the inside at least, one could have imagined it to be any of the wealthiest valley palaces. The icy winds of the peaks whistled by unmarked by those under the great glass dome of the courtyard.
Telian had been destined for the school since before he was born. Every firstborn of the Harkner line had come to manhood climbing those accursed stairs. He found the whole thing boring in the extreme; this was the twenty-first century, not the thirteenth. Why anyone would still want their sons to be educated in this backward, isolated fashion was beyond his comprehension.
The ancient bells rang from the turret at the highest pinnacle, producing echoes that even impressed Telian. He followed his fellow students as they pouted from their classrooms into the dusk of the sanctum, groaning inwardly. Lit only by the flickering of recessed candles, and smelling of crowded bodies, the room was his least favorite. Still, there was no avoiding meditation. Resigned, he gazed into the swirling pattern in the center stone as he had been taught.
This time, the swirl held his gaze, and instead of wandering into memories of video games and girls, he watched the swirl move and twist before his eyes. The room along with its occupants faded into darkness, and a voice reverberated with the sound of the bells. “Telian Harkner, heir of the Tenth Realm, it is time. Come and be counted among your forefathers.”
We live in a society driven by the concept of “they.” When a problem arises, it’s “their” fault. When disagreements occur, “they” are wrong. When we feel insecure, “they” are oppressive. When we don’t get what we want, “they” are selfish. When dangers appear, “they” cause them.
Certainly there is fixed right and wrong, good and bad, so “they” seems to most a given separation. The problem with “they” is a deep desire for control born just after the beginning of time. “They” must believe what I believe, make me feel safe, give me what I want, do the same things I do, like the same things I like. If “they” are different from me in any way “they” must be immoral and immorality must be eliminated. “They” can’t have choices if “they” choose differently than I do.
God, the Creator of all things, gave us the ability to make choices. He also made each of us unique. That same Creator called for unity among His people, but that unity wasn’t to come from within ourselves. Because of His design, unity from ourselves is impossible.
At the beginning of time, when His children still had intimate connection with His spiritual realm, He imposed only one law: don’t eat from that tree. It wasn’t imposed to control His children; it existed to remind them to trust Him, to appreciate His love and provision. During the years following their failure of trust, His inspired writers recorded no laws set for humanity. Rather, those who longed for the intimacy that had been broken were rewarded by direct communication with Him, and sincere efforts at humility and commitment were accepted with great love.
Eventually, God set His people up as a physical nation, a country with physical boundaries. For them He set a system of laws, a structure. Most of those laws protected innocent life and property, and provided for the health and prosperity of the people. Although it was intended to be a theocracy, laws were even provided to govern the behavior and power of a king, because God knew humans would not be able to hold onto the idea of a King they could not see. The provisions made for worship rituals were not laws in the way we think of laws; they were instructions, provisions for the people to be able to approach a King who was beyond their reach. Indeed, all of the laws given on Sinai were for the purpose of education, a means of demonstrating the character of God for imitation by His people.
Throughout the history of that physical nation God continually spoke with grief of how its citizens misunderstood and mistreated that law. Instead of learning its deep principles of character, they treated it as arbitrary and inconvenient, even when they outwardly followed it. At times they even weaponized it against each other and against non-citizens of that nation, adding specifics and ignoring depth in order to gain power for themselves. When God Himself came in human form He broke the human misinterpretation of His law often, repeatedly emphasizing the lessons it was supposed to have taught. Then He performed the self-sacrifice that had always been the intended end of the physical country and its system of laws.
That sacrifice reinstated the intimate connection enjoyed in the beginning. It tore the curtain between the physical and the spiritual, allowing anyone willing to see the truth to participate in the spiritual while bound to the physical world. Such faithful individuals became citizens of a spiritual nation, a nation that exists as part of God Himself and therefore above the need for physical boundaries and laws. It simply is what it is, and it’s citizens are purified by it.
Sadly, the concept of “they” pervades the human organization perceived as the nation of God. Just like the citizens of the physical country, people today desire control, our own idea of order. Like children, and with a similar lack of experience, we organize a fictional world that makes us comfortable and assume that God agrees with us. Then, in our mistaken fervor, we weaponize our construction against “they,” and weep in confusion and frustration when our weapons backfire.
God addressed the concept of “they” throughout scripture. From that first breach in relationship, He told humans that one day He would restore it for any who wanted it. For the hundreds of years of the physical country He established, He told them over and over that His purpose was to restore true unity of purpose between Him and all of His creation. Even after He had torn the veil, He had to remind confused humanity that in His nation “they” does not exist. He is the unity, and all those who seek Him honestly and long to be a part of His character become citizens of His spiritual nation. These individuals reflect His perfection, the immutable Law of good without need of laws or rules. It is beyond our human understanding, a nation built on complete trust in Him and complete surrender of our own childish worlds.
When we surrender and step into that unity, we begin to understand the love God has for humanity. His children have never been “they,” an enemy to be destroyed. The only enemy is evil, the confusion that Satan seeds in us to pull us away from God and from each other. “They” is simply anyone who succumbs to confusion and forgets Him. “They” could quite easily be “me.”
The hot glue gun sat cooling beside his hand. A quick inspection of the board, a wiggle here or tap there, showed nothing loose or out of place. It was finally finished. How long had it taken him to figure out the right materials for those mossy roofs? He couldn’t even remember. It hadn’t mattered, really; the model had to be perfect.
He wasn’t sure why, exactly. He had woken one morning with an overwhelming need to build it. A town he had never seen, but he knew every detail. He’d looked it up one day, trying to convince himself it was just imagination and didn’t have to be so precise. There it was, a tiny town somewhere in the mountains clear across the world. How it could even be recorded on the internet he didn’t understand. After that he gave up fighting the urge; he never repeated his search or dug any deeper either. He had been too afraid of the reasons to want to know them.
Now, as he stood over his work, tiny lights flickered in the windows. He blinked, but they didn’t vanish. Music drifted faintly from the treeline on the far side of the model, and the tops of brightly-colored trees around the houses quivered as if a gentle breeze tickled them. The laughter of children rose from the house nearest him. He didn’t wait for more but stumbled to the door on legs that felt like jello. In his terrified hurry he forgot to shut the door.
“Be silent in the presence of the Lord God, for the day of the Lord is near. Indeed, the Lord has prepared a sacrifice; he has consecrated his guests.”
Zephaniah wrote these words to a people oblivious to God, a people nearing a time of judgment and discipline. The people God had chosen to represent him had instead chosen to mock Him and rebel against Him. Though they would be disciplined in the short term, another five hundred years or more would pass before the day of the promised sacrifice.
When it came, the sacrifice proved far different than any nation had ever offered. God Himself hung on a criminal’s cross, while the curtain that had come to prevent the people’s recognition of their own corruption ripped in two. That moment began a judgment that will continue until the end of the world. In that moment the final victory of good over evil was revealed.
This judgment, this victory, is far from obvious to the wicked. Evil continues to be promoted, horrible acts continue to be perpetrated. The father of lies will never concede defeat as long as he sees opportunity to sow chaos and doubt. Self-absorbed humans will always fall for any excuse offered for refusal to acknowledge God. And always they will attack the faithful, the ones whose unwavering reflection of goodness and truth serves as an uncomfortable reminder of their loss.
Yet Zephaniah says that God’s people cannot be shamed. They are safe and separate from those who practice evil. They are exalted throughout the earth, victors and rulers where their enemies would make them slaves. They have no fear of enemies, and live in a peace their enemies will never experience. They are surrounded by a shield of living water born of that sacrifice; washed clean of evil as they stepped through it, they can no longer be stained by it.
For those who cling to evil and mock victory, however, that shield is made of impenetrable stone. They bash themselves against it with useless howls of pain, fear, and anger, destroying themselves with their own frenzy. Or they stand forlornly with their backs to a wall of water, besieged by their own army and doomed by their own fears.
The victory has been won. The judgment has been pronounced. Whether we suffer destructive defeat or celebrate eternal and perfect conquest depends on the side we have chosen. There is no neutral territory; we are either good, made perfect by the Judge Himself, or we are evil. And as Zephaniah warned the scornful people of Judah, our time to choose has a swiftly approaching end.
Louise tossed her glasses down on the table and massaged her aching head with tense fingers. How long had she been sitting here, trying to make the words come? Long enough for the tea she had made to be cold and bitter, at least. The rain made watching the passage of the sun impossible, and she had left her phone in her bedroom.
Coming up here to her grandmother’s farmhouse was supposed to solve everything. No distractions, plenty of open spaces and quiet, the perfect place to let the creative springs flow. Except they weren’t. She sighed. Maybe she should just face it; she was a one-hit-wonder. Writers could have hits, too, right? Maybe that one idea was a fluke, and she’d never have another.
She passed her hands over her face and glared at the notebook through splayed fingers. Wait, that key hadn’t been there before. She glanced around suspiciously, and hurriedly rose to check both corners of the porch for intruders. No one was there, and she laughed at herself. No one could have been on the porch without making the old boards creak just like they were doing under her own feet. But that key. Where could it have come from?
She sank back down onto the woven seat of the old straight backed chair. Slowly she picked up the old-fashioned bit of iron and twirled it between thumb and forefinger. An idea trickled into her mind, the barest beginning of something, but it was a beginning. She dropped the key to reach for her pen, then paused in consternation. What was it again? Of course, the one idea she’d had was gone just that fast. She picked up the key again, and her mind flooded with story. She stared with open mouth for a moment, then shoved the key into her other hand and snatched up her pen again. This was going to be a good one.
It’s a bad word in our society, a lightning rod that attracts every social argument imaginable. Manual laborers view with contempt those who work with their minds, considering them lazy and out of touch with reality. Those in intellectually focused professions look down on manual laborers, certain that no one with ambition would waste time working with their hands. Both despise those who work in entertainment, considering them lazy, immoral, or both. Then, of course, there are those who receive public aid; whether or not due to true need seems irrelevant, whether they are exalted or despised.
Work as a concept is not that complicated. It is the process by which one contributes to one’s society. Every individual has a contribution to make, a way to work, that is unique to him or herself. That contribution may or may not be one that requires specialized knowledge. It may or may not include clocking in for a boss. It may or may not produce what are considered survival necessities. But it is still a necessary contribution.
Animals spend their lives chasing survival. They have little if any other motivation. They have no capacity for appreciation, for individuality, for true creativity. Only humans have such abilities, and as possessor of them, we are not meant merely to survive. We are meant not only to feed, clothe and shelter ourselves, but to learn, to imagine, to produce beauty and laughter, to touch hearts with language, to challenge each other in image or song.
The Creator declared the laborer worthy of his hire. What makes a farmer more entitled to compensation than a poet? What makes a doctor more entitled to compensation than an electrician? What makes a retail worker more entitled than a football player or actor more entitled than an entrepreneur? Does the poet do less work because it was mostly internal and not easily quantifiable? Does the entrepreneur not deserve the same recognition of talent and dedication to their dreams as the actor?
By the same token, because we are designed with such great potential, our lives should not be reduced to a daily grind. Our work should be drawn from our passions and character, and should encompass everything that is important to us as individuals. If we thought this way, the woman who chooses to balance time with her family as well as set hours performing a task for money would not be criticized. The man who pours all his resources into crafting products for sale and whose wife and children work alongside him would be heralded for his efforts instead of vilified for demanding fair pay for his efforts. The poet who poured her troubled soul into song to relieve another’s pain would never be expected to share her gift without pay. Every work would be understood to be essential, and would be compensated as essential.
In the law given at Mt. Sinai, God set economic rules for physical Israel to follow. These rules included a form of servitude designed to pay off a debt. This servitude was completely voluntary, and when the time allotted for the debt had expired, the individual returned to full freedom. On occasion, however, the servant would build a life in servitude based on love and respect for his employer, a life that being released would destroy. In that case the employer would take the servant before all the people and stamp a hole through the servant’s ear against the employer’s doorframe, symbolically binding the servant with the employer’s household forever. Some would say that this binding was a sacrifice of freedom, a sacrifice of choice, but in reality it was the ultimate choice.
On a warm starry night many hundreds of years later, the God of Heaven arrived on Earth as a baby, completely dependent. He would live thirty-three years within restrictions vastly smaller than His own nature, serving His creation, paying a debt to them that they owed to Him. When the time of His earthly servitude expired, he allowed His creation to pierce Him, much as the servant’s ear was pierced, symbolically binding Him to His creation as He was bound to a wooden cross. Some would say that this binding was a sacrifice of freedom, a sacrifice of divine choice, but in reality it was the ultimate choice.
My ear has not been bored with an awl, my body has not been nailed to a cross. These are pictures, symbols, provided to help us understand our purpose and our relationship with God. Our service to Him is not forced; we have always been and always will be given a choice. Choosing to serve Him is choosing to know Him, to become a part of His life as He becomes a part of mine. Unlike human employers, who may not inspire pleasant feelings in their employees, God calls His servants loved children. Once experienced, that love cannot be easily relinquished, and our souls are pierced, joined forever with His. Our wills bend to please Him because we return that incomprehensible, unshakable love to Him. Some would say that this bond is a sacrifice of freedom, a sacrifice of choice. In reality it is the ultimate choice, a choice that is never changing, never ending. It is the choice of a servant.
The house had been around longer than living memory. According to tradition, it had been built by the first settlers on the coast, the ancestors of the town’s founders. Supposedly, the patriarch of the clan, banished for some offense and accompanied only by his wife and baby son, had scavenged loose stones from the base of the cliffs and stacked them one by one, room by room, until he had created the mansion.
I wasn’t too sure about tradition myself, people tended to make stories bigger than the truth, but I wasn’t too sure about the house itself either. Something had always thrown me about it, something that made my vision want to skip over it. I had spent more hours than was good for me staring at that thing, but I thought I had finally figured out what was off. I just didn’t know why.
The windows didn’t fit. The stone frames were long, as if once the openings had been much larger, but the stonework was seamless inside the frames. The same hand had obviously stoned all of it. It didn’t make sense, but when I asked anyone about it they just peered at the house with a confused expression and said they didn’t see what I meant.
I couldn’t stand it; I had to know about those windows frames. I waited for the owners to leave on their annual month-long jaunt and snuck up to the house during siesta. I expected the stones to be hot when I ran my hands over them, but my skin sizzled on contact with the frames and I jerked my hand back with a cry. The windows and front door vanished, leaving three dark apertures gaping in the wall. Whispers called to me, insistent. I chose an opening and stepped inside.
The Word Worker 
