How to Write a Devotional in 300 Words or Less

How to Write a Devotional in 300 Words or Less

Writing short devotionals is difficult. Difficult, but not impossible. If you believe you have a biblical insight worth sharing with others, it may be tempting to go into great detail to ensure readers get the point. You don’t want them to miss the takeaway. But devotional readers want to see a snapshot, not the entire photo album. One way to stay within the recommended word count each publisher establishes is to focus on one main idea. You must telescope your ideas from panoramic to snapshot and only have three or four sentences to get the main point across. You must be concise and avoid repetition. And most importantly, you must get your thoughts across without any hint of condemnation or accusation. There are several keys to writing a short devotional or meditation: Grab the reader from the start, present an interpretation of the chosen scripture passage, give a practical application the reader can take away, and conclude with a challenge for the reader to take action. Devotional readers want to see a snapshot, not the entire photo album. Grab the Reader In order to grab the reader’s interest early and keep it, start with a strong lead. That can be a brief story readers can relate to—which highlights a spiritual problem, question, or experience we all face—or a story from the Bible. For example: One widow tricked her father-in-law into having sex. One was the town prostitute. One widow left her country for a foreign land. One became pregnant by a man not her husband. One was a pregnant unwed teenager. So why are these women’s stories in the Bible? Because God used each of them to bring His son, Jesus, into the world to save it. Present an Interpretation Next, state a biblical truth from the Bible that supports your case. Think single photograph instead of full-length movie at this point. Throw out anything that doesn’t lend support to the main idea. If you keep a copy of the assignment in front of you while you write, it makes it easier to stick to the assignment and not go down rabbit trails. As you write, you need to be careful not to make yourself the center of the meditation when relating the story. Your job is to draw readers closer to God, not to you. Tamar, a Gentile, desired to be part of God’s people. Rahab, a Gentile prostitute, believed in the God who led His people out of Egypt. Ruth, a widowed Moabitess, chose to identify herself with God’s people. Bathsheba’s husband was killed to hide her adulterous pregnancy. Mary, the teenage virgin, was the mother of God’s son. Five women with different backgrounds and stories whose lives were woven together throughout history. Your job is to draw readers closer to God, not to you. Include a Practical Application Some publishers allow writers to choose the verse for their meditation. Some assign the verse. If you choose your own verse, you need to resist the urge to use more than one verse unless absolutely necessary. You don’t need to retell the verse in your meditation. Your job is to comment on it and provide a way for readers to apply these ideas to their everyday lives. Here is an example of practical application to complement the verse about the five women: What did these woman have in common? Faith in a God bigger than themselves who could take their brokenness and bring something beautiful out of it. A God who deals in redemption and grace just as surely today as He has throughout history, using broken and battered people to achieve His goals. Conclude with a Challenge Finally, a devotional should challenge readers to grow closer to God by developing a deeper relationship with Him through the words you’ve written. The last sentence should be memorable and move readers to make a decision. That’s the whole point of your meditation after all, isn’t it? Just as God loved and used these five women, He can use us. We all can be redeemed through His grace when we have faith enough to say yes to Him. Devotional Markets The following devotional markets accept freelance submissions: Alive Now https://alivenow.upperroom.org/writers/ Christian Devotions https://www.christiandevotions.us/writeforus Light from the Word https://www.wesleyan.org/wg The Upper Room https://www.upperroom.org/about/writer-guidelines/upper-room Once you have your idea written down, it’s time to edit what you’ve written to make every word count. Now’s the time to eliminate wordy phrases, such as in my opinion, it appears to me, it has come to my attention, the story’s been told ... and make sure you use strong verbs instead of weak adverbs. This is also where you count how many times you used the words that, just, then, to, was. Is each one necessary? Will the meaning of the meditation be altered if they are removed? You should be careful not to rely on Christianese words like blessing, in Christ, and by faith. A devotional meditation is not the time to rant about pet peeves. Your aim is to inspire readers. Instead of saying, you need to, we should say we need to. We’re on this journey together, after all. To write a devotional in 300 words or less: Grab reader’s interest from the start: begin with a strong lead. Tell a brief life story readers can relate to: think snapshot not panoramic view. Declare your key point: stick to the assignment and focus on one main idea. Close with a bang that challenges the reader to respond and leads to a decision. Make every word count: get rid of unnecessary words. Do you have a brief story, spiritual question, or experience we all face you feel will grab a reader’s and editor’s attention in 300 words or less? If so, check the guidelines of publishers listed in the sidebar, submit, and see what happens. Example of a Devotional God’s Big Eraser In the days before Smart Boards, perhaps you remember blackboards and white chalk. To remove the chalk, a black felt eraser was pushed back and forth to clean the board. Still, traces of words remained until the board was washed. When I taught elementary school, pre-Smart Board days, I found an amazing new eraser made of foam. This eraser took away every speck of dust, leaving no residue behind. Everything I wrote on the board was gone. All erased. All forgotten. Washed clean. Fortunately, God has an eraser like that. When he erases our sins, through the shed blood of Jesus on the cross, there isn’t any residue left. No faint reminder to show all the times we’ve sinned. It’s all gone. All erased. All forgotten. Washed clean. Satan’s not real happy with the fact our sins can be washed away. He wants to keep accusing and reminding us of all the times we tried and failed. Sort of like using the felt eraser. He wants our sins to stay visible. But Jesus took all our sins upon himself and nailed them to the cross. When we name him as Lord of our life, we don’t need to keep dredging up the past and its sins. God has an eraser that’s far superior to the foam one I used. His eraser stretches from one scarred hand to the other. Hanging on to past sins? Talk to Jesus about them. Let Him forgive you and wash every trace away. As high as the sky is above the earth, so great is His love for those who honor Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our sins from us. Psalm 103:11-12

TUMC

 

Passionately Drunk by Fr. Stephen Freeman

Passionately Drunk

Fr. Stephen Freeman

The Philokalia, that wonderful collection of writings by the fathers on prayer of the heart, has as its full title, The Philokalia of the Neptic Saints gathered from our Holy Theophoric Fathers, through which, by means of the philosophy of ascetic practice and contemplation, the intellect is purified, illumined, and made perfect. Little wonder it is known popularly as thePhilokalia. That word, Philokalia, means “the love of beautiful things.” It is not a reference to expensive, decorative items, but to the things which are made beautiful by their union with God. All things are beautiful inasmuch as they are united to God, Who is Beauty itself.

Another important word in the title is the adjective, “Neptic” (νηπτικός). It has a variety of translations: sober, watchful, vigilant. It refers to those who, having their earthly senses purified, have become truly aware of God and dwell in Him. This title is especially used to describe the fathers of the Hesychast tradition in Orthodoxy, the tradition of ceaseless prayer and inner stillness associated with the monastic life.

To describe these fathers as “sober,” is very insightful. For our experience with the passions, the disordered desires of our body and soul, is often an experience of drunkenness.

For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him (1 Thess. 5:7-10).

The man who is drunk is famously unaware of his surroundings. He stumbles physically, mentally and spiritually, barely aware of his own imbalance. The passions have the same ability to blind us. In anger we are aware primarily of our own anger. What we see, we see through the haze of the energy that pulses through our mind and body.

All of the passions have this property. They consume us and become the primary lens through which we see the world and with which we react. Thus we are described as in “delusion.” Those who see the world through their passions do not see the truth of things. They see their own passions.

There is a social aspect to the passions – they are not restricted to an individual’s experience. Whole societies, or significant segments within it, can be drunk with the same passions. Thus a whole society can be drunk with the passion of racism (a mixture of ignorance, superstition, fear, anger, etc.). Such a passion is reinforced by being repeatedly affirmed by those around us. Many aspects of culture are simply a communion of the passions.

We live in an age where the passions are carefully studied and used as the objects of marketing. Those things that are sold to us (even those that supposedly appeal to our intellect) are marketed to our passions. Apple computer famously researches the “feel” of its packaging, presenting a sensual experience that is associated with quality, precision and value. It is a successful strategy across the whole of our culture.

However, those who are “drunk” with the passions also yield themselves as victims to their intoxication. Political parties pour massive amounts of money into their campaigns simply to create and nurture the passions by which people vote. We are not governed by reason or informed decisions. Most of what you or I think about political subjects is a description of the passions to which we are enslaved. The political cynicism of many is, to a degree, a recognition of our disgust with the politics of passion.

By the same token, most of the opinions we nurture are equally the product of our passions. We think, we believe, we decide, we act largely in accord with the passions to which we are enthralled. Theological debates are generally arguments between one person’s passions and another’s. It is a conversation between drunks.

And so the Church values the holy, sober fathers. These are the men and women who have walked the narrow way of salvation, “putting to death the deeds of the body.” Inner stillness is the state of freedom from disordered passions. The neptic fathers do not cease to desire (they are not Buddhists). But their desires have been purified and healed – restored to proper order. Sobriety means desiring the right thing in the right way at the right time. Traditionally, this purification and healing come as a result of a life of repentance, fasting and prayer. It slays demons and heals the wounds of the soul. All things are brought into obedience to Christ.

It is the life that Scripture enjoins:

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he my devour. Rsist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world (1 Peter 5:8-9).

There is a story in the desert fathers that illustrates such vigilance. A community of monks once heard a rumor that one of their number was harboring a woman in his cell. They went to the elder and complained. While they became yet more agitated, the elder slipped away to the cell of the erring monk. Finding the woman there, he hid her in a large earthen vessel. He placed the lid on the vessel and sat on it. Soon the angry monks arrived at the cell and began to search for the woman. Out of respect for the elder they overlooked the vessel on which he was sitting. Finding nothing, they apologized to the erring monk and left. The elder, rose from his seat and said to the monk, “Pay attention to yourself.”

It is a call to sobriety. The angry monks were drunk with their own self-righteousness. Their sin was at least as great as the erring monk. The elder alone was sober. His sobriety hid the sin of a man from those who would have harmed him, and revealed the sin to the one who needed to be healed. The word of healing was kind and without judgment. “Pay attention to yourself.” It is the simple word of St. Peter, “Be sober.”

For all of us, in every moment of the day with regard to all things and all people, it is good to pay proper attention to ourselves.

This prayer of St. Isaac of Syria, great among the neptic fathers, is one of my favorites:

I knock at the door of Thy compassion, Lord: send aid to my scattered impulses which are drunk with the multitude of the passions and the power of darkness.

Thou canst see my sores hidden within me: stir up contrition – though not corresponding to the weight of my sins, for if I receive full awareness of the extent of my sins, Lord, my soul would be consumed by the bitter pain from them.

Assist my feeble stirrings on the path to true repentance, and may I find relief from the vehemence of sins through the contrition that comes of Thy gift, for without the power of Thy grace I am quite unable to enter within myself, become aware of my stains, and so, at the sight of them, be able to be still from great distraction.

Is Witness More Important Than Worship?

January 23, 2016 by Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick 8 Comments

Suffering and Repentance

As you prepare to hear my sermon this Sunday, I ask you to contemplate on the story below.  Please read Luke 13: 1-9 and 1 Corinthians 10: 1-13 and be ready to engage in God's word this Sunday morning.

Trevor Beeson stood at the high altar of Westminster Abbey to celebrate the marriage of his daughter, Catharine, to Anthony, aged twenty-three. Nine months later he stood before the saame altar for Anthony's funeral, who was killed when his car ran into a wall in East London. Four months later, Trevor returned to the altar beside the coffin of his friend and hero Earl Mountbatten, who died when his fishing boat was blown to pieces by Irish terrorist. Reflecting on the experience, he said he could not blame God for these senseless tragedies. He wrote:

I should find it impossible to believe in, and worship, a God who arranged for the great servants of the community to be blown up on their holidays and who deliberately turned a young man's car into a brick wall...This is not the God of love whose ways are revealed in the Bible and supremely in the life of Jesus Christ.

Beeson found two insights that helped him to cope with his tragedy and to look beyond it: "The first is that, although God is not responsible for causing tragedy, he is not a detached observer of our suffering. On the contrary, he is immersed in it with us, sharing to the full our particular grief and pain. This is the fundamental significance of the cross."

Second, although we naturally ask, "Why did it happen?" Beeson discovered that the more important question is "What are we going to make of it?"; "Every tragedy contains within it the seeds of resurrection." This is, after all, the whole point of our pilgrimage through Lent, to Good Friday, and Easter morning.

Are those who experience innocent suffering worse than anyone else? Of course not. It can happen to any of us.

But is there a connection between innocent suffering and human action? Of course there is, and unless we change our way of living, we may all experience the same suffering.

What does Jesus offer us when we experience this kind of suffering? The power of God to hold us firm, to give us strength, and to see us through.

See you in Church!

Nels

An Unnecessary Salvation, Fr. Stephen Freeman

An Unnecessary Salvation

Fr. Stephen Freeman

One of the oddest thoughts to have crept its way into the Christian mind is the notion of what is “necessary to salvation.” The simple questions within the New Testament, “What must we do to be saved?” quickly become the stuff of bumper-stickers and a reduced version of Christianity unable to sustain a genuine spiritual life.

In my seminary years (Anglican), I had a professor who stated that he did not believe in angels. I was puzzled and asked him why. “Because they are not necessary. Anything an angel can do can be done by the Holy Spirit.” And there you have it. Only things that are necessary need to be posited as existing. It explains the apparent disappearance of the unicorn.

Here in Appalachia it is not unusual to be told, “All I need is Jesus and the King James Bible.” Of course the least-common-denominator version of Christianity is not only handy and compact, it also leaves untouched the entire remainder of a secular existence. My pickup truck, my gun, the fifth of liquor under the seat, my anger and love of reality TV have nothing to do with Jesus and my Bible. It is a very convenient version of the Two-Storey Universe.

Anglicanism (as did many other versions of Protestantism) enshrined some of this sentiment in the Oath of Ordination required of its clergy. In this they swore that they believed the “Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to contain all things necessary to salvation.” In the hands of more extreme Reformers, this notion became a slogan with which to eliminate everything from Christianity other than those things that could be found in the Scriptures. A white-washed (literally) Christianity, devoid of ceremony and with only a hint of sacrament was the result. It is easily the primary culprit in the creation of secularism. All the “unnecessary stuff” is removed from Christianity, leaving the world with huge collections of unchristian, “neutral” things. This instinct and principle is both contrary to the Scriptures themselves as well as destructive of the very nature of the Christian faith.

A contrary principle can be seen in the affirmation: “All things work together for good, for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.” The same thought can be found in 1 Corinthians:

For all things are yours: whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come– all are yours. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. (1Co 3:21-23)

What is this “all things”? It is precisely what it sounds like – everything that is. Our salvation won’t fit on a bumper-sticker inasmuch as it includes everything that is: everything is working together towards the restoration of our communion with God. God has created nothing that is excluded from this work. Our own efforts to narrow the scope of our salvation to a few verses of Scripture, snatched from here and there, are exercises in gross misunderstanding.

That Christianity in its classical form has always had an instinct for “all things,” is evidenced in the use of “all things” within its services and sacraments. And when those uses are examined, what is uncovered is a “seamless garment” of salvation. Nothing is “by the way.” I have made the statement from time to time with catechumens in my parish that we could begin with the smallest thing, a simple blade of grass, and go from there to give a full account of the entirety of the gospel. It could also be said that if an account of the gospel excludes even so much as a blade of grass, then it has been seriously misunderstood.

There is no imagined version of Christianity within the New Testament that exists outside the Church. Anyone who says that they have a “relationship with Jesus” and do not need the Church is in deep delusion. There is no such Jesus.

A not inaccurate polemic against this reductionist form of Christianity is to describe it as an increasing Islamification of the faith. I have written before of the influence of Islam on the notion of Sola Scriptura. Christianity, viewed as essentially an act of submission to God through Christ, is not Christianity. It is a Christianized Islam. It’s useful. It need have none of the problems concomitant with a genuine historical Church. It is quite portable and can be kept entirely private, offering no disturbance to the structures and agreements of the secular world. Individual Christians are never a problem for the world. It’s only when two or three of them gather together that they become dangerous.

The Church is the beginning and foretaste of the “all things” that are our salvation. Salvation, when understood properly, cannot be tied to an isolated verse. For example:

He who believes and is baptized will be saved; (Mar 16:16)

This in no way is meant to say that simply belief and baptism are sufficient unto themselves for salvation. “As many as are baptized into Christ are baptized into His death,” St. Paul says, “and raised in the likeness of His resurrection.” Additionally, “…by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body…”  (1Co 12:13) Baptism is not an isolated event, or an act of magic. It is the gateway into the death and resurrection of Christ, while the Church is nothing other than the death and resurrection of Christ through time. And, in time, we shall see that everything was always the Church, from the first pronouncement, “Let there be light.”

And so we are told that God:

[has] made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth– in Him. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, (Eph 1:9-11)

Salvation is “all things.” And in this good life, all things are necessary. He has made nothing without purpose.

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Doing good in a bad world by Fr. Stephen Freeman

Doing Good in a Bad World

Fr. Stephen Freeman

A bad man cannot make a good world.

“Something must be done!” If there were a possible slogan for the modern world, this would be it. It’s power lies in its truth. Some things are tragic and unjust, broken and dysfunctional. Any analysis that suggested that nothing should be done will fall on deaf ears – and should. However, this is where the great temptation of modernity begins. Something must be done. But what?

Modernity is filled with solutions and America is the land of solutions. Every American is a mechanic at heart. Our fiercest and most enduring arguments are about how to fix things: more of this, less of that or less of this and more of that.

The first great temptation of modernity is the illusion of power, effective power. The power to do one thing is not the power to do everything. For every exercise of power towards a particular end, a host of unexpected and unplanned new problems arise. Many times, we fix things only to discover that the solution is worse than the disease. We’re our own worst enemies.

The lure of control is almost irresistible. Every anxiety begs for the means to control the object of its fear. And though we can do many things, we can never do everything. Most often, our failures and catastrophes operate beyond our intentions and just outside our reach.

Christ’s own example stands as a contradiction to our controlling urges. For though, as God, He clearly could have done all things, He does very little. His entire ministry takes place within a radius of 100 miles. At its completion, He had amassed only a few hundred disciples. He was largely silent on the topic of Roman power, and said little to nothing about social structures. Though He healed a few, most of the sick remained sick. We hear the cry of the New York Daily News, “God Isn’t Fixing This!”

Of course, the underlying assumption of the Daily News (and most of the world) is that someone should. If God’s not going to do it, then we will! Others conclude that God could do it but that for some reason He wants us to do it instead. And others still will say God doesn’t do it because there is no God.

All of these responses are predicated on the belief that something can be done and that therefore something must be done (I am not thinking specifically about the problem of terrorism – the “this” that God isn’t fixing could be almost anything). None of the responses considers the possibility that God is, in fact, doing something, but something quite unexpected and unlooked for.

The Christian faith teaches that man himself is the problem. It does not teach that human beings are evil, but that we are broken, flawed and misdirected in our lives. The human project has gone astray. Christ Himself is the first answer: He is the New Man.

St. Seraphim of Sarov famously said, “Acquire the Spirit of Peace and a thousand souls around you will be saved.” He cannot be accused of doing nothing. He poured his life out in prayer and fasting and acquired the Spirit of Peace. As such, he became the salvation of thousands of souls.

Christ once said to His disciples, “The poor you have with you always.” He could be taken (incorrectly) to mean, “There is nothing you can do about the poor.” But it is the case that more has been done for the poor in His name than for any other reason. But the poor remain. They remain because they live in the midst of the problem: broken, flawed and misdirected humanity. Were poverty to disappear in an instant, it would return quite swiftly. Its causes are not primarily economic: they are existential.

Christian living in the modern world is an art. Its heart rightly cares for the world and even broods over its problems. But that art is no greater than Christ. We cannot achieve as bad men what Christ Himself did not seek as the Good Man. For, in the end, perfection through control can only work through control. Absolute perfection means absolute control. This becomes the very heart of the demonic. It is, of course, true, that we seek only a relative improvement and not absolute perfection. This is something that we can, from time to time, actually do. But the greater its vision, the greater the need for control. The art of doing good requires humility.

This is equally true of treating evil. We cannot rid the world of evil, no matter its form. We will not destroy terrorism. We can seek to limit its scope and its effects. The drive to eradicate it completely would inevitably create either more terror, or consequences still unforeseen (just as the present terrorism has itself been an unforeseen consequence).

This is especially true in our personal lives. Many people in the contemporary world substitute opinions and sentiments about problems elsewhere for actual action anywhere. This is an imaginary existence in which we give ourselves over to nothingness. It is primarily driven by political rhetoric of the right and the left and is of very little consequence.

But true action is deeply important. Faith without works is dead.

True action is begotten with integrity. Modernity wants to make the world a better place. Christian action recognizes that I, myself, am the first of all problems. If nothing changes about me, then nothing true has happened. It is this that St. Seraphim describes as “acquiring the Spirit of Peace.” Christ describes it in this manner:

And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother,`Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Mat 7:3-5)

Many treat this saying as an admonition to avoid judging others. But it is also a description of true action. I can aid my brother with the speck in his eye, but only if I have dealt with the larger problem of my own plank. Sin begets sin. Only righteousness heals. The world needs healing, not fixing.

“Making the world a better place” is deeply arrogant speech from the unrighteous. A righteous elder once said, “I need go no further than my own heart to find the source of all violence in the world.”

It is there, in my own heart, that something must be done.

http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2015/12/08/doing-good-in-a-bad-world/