Starting Points: 100 Triggers for Writing, Journal-Keeping, and Personal Reflection

By Daniel Pelletier

Starting Points: One Hundred Triggers for Writing, Journal-Keeping, and Personal Reflection encourages its readers to be journal-keepers who believe that their thoughts, insights, and discoveries are worth recording, then developing, and possibly publishing. Daniel Pelletier has selected one hundred items from his own journals and letters. Many of these are reflections upon Scripture, while others are inspired by experiences. A few poems and creative bits are included. A serious spirituality is sometimes blended with humor.

Starting Points is premised upon the idea that journal-keeping is vital to any serious writer. Journal notes from various experiences in ones life can provide any writer with seed-thoughts and inspiration for later writing projects.

To encourage readers to begin keeping their own journals, each piece is followed by a blank space for response, query, maybe disagreement, maybe a creative take-off (poem, song, article, story bit). These journal notes may be dated (or not) and collected to a file. The authors practice is to have a Starters folder, with each file limited to 50 items or pieces. A dozen files, for example, would have 600 pieces to be mined and developed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Dec 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781489710550

Daniel Pelletier

Daniel Pelletier has retired after 33 years teaching college English. He has published three inspirational books on Christian and biblical topics, and now turns to publishing his picture-books for children.

Book preview

1

I’M FREE!

Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. – John 8:34-36 (NIV)

God brought His Son out of Egypt while Egypt said We won’t let him go! (See Exodus chapters 5-13). And there seems to be an Egypt in me saying We won’t let you go! It’s called my flesh-nature. You may have heard that prayer, Lord, thank you for bringing me out of Egypt. Now teach me, help me, to get Egypt out of me.

Something doesn’t want this new man, this Christ-man, to live free from bondage. But God says I have been set free! Romans 6:22 tells us we have been "set free from sin and have become slaves to God." (NIV)

Can there be a good slavery? It seems an odd word to use for our adoption as sons, but it works. If we are bond-servants to God, we can call that a good bondage. When we are totally surrendered, totally yielded in our commitment, when God owns us, and His Word owns us, that’s a good thing.

As a bond-servant to my Lord, I am in a good bondage, but knowing what I know of slavery, it’s not easy to call it a good slavery. Well, Romans was written in Greek, and the Greek word can be rendered either bondage or slavery. Take your pick.

Sample response: (song lyrics)

Let there be no chains, Lord,

nothing of my old life remains, Lord,

to hold me back,

I will not be held back.

On this road, I walk with you, Lord,

with heaven and glory in view, Lord,

no looking back,

no turning back,

I will not be held back.

Your thoughts or response / journal entry:

2

A HOUSE FOR GOD?

My dwelling place will be with them: I will be their God, and they will be my people. – Ezekiel 37:27 (NIV)

God is everywhere, so what would He want with a house? He needs no house, but in 2 Chronicles 6:8 God tells David it is good that he has it in his heart to build a grand temple for my Name.

God was pleased that David wanted to build a temple, though David was not the one to do it (2 Chron. 6:9).

Solomon built an elaborate temple for a dwelling place for God, but what he built could no more contain God than if he had nailed together a birdhouse. To the One who is in every corner of the cosmos (and infinitely beyond), the difference in size between a temple and a treehouse is negligible. But, of course, Solomon built something that could honor God, and accommodate God’s people gathering to worship. The glory of God can occupy a pecan shell; size matters only to the congregation.

Habakkuk 2:20 declares the Lord is in His holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before Him. So, while God needs no house, He received the honor and returned honor in the building of the temple. His glory filled the building, perhaps as Solomon never imagined.

And now He dwells in us. Let’s all agree that’s amazing.

Your thoughts or response / journal entry:

3

SHE KNEW HER SON

His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever He tells you to do.’ – John 2:5 (NIV)

In the second chapter of John’s gospel, we have the wedding celebration in Cana. When they ran out of wine, Jesus’ mother was fully confident that her Son could do something wonderful. How could she be so sure? Jesus must have done some things to give her such confidence. What was she expecting Him to do? Not get more wine brought in from someplace. She told the servants to do whatever He instructed—and she probably knew it would be miraculous.

But we don’t know what Jesus may have done at home in all those years. Did Joseph ever cut himself badly with a chisel in the workshop? Did Jesus heal the cut? Did Mary sprain an ankle carrying water from the well? Did Jesus touch her ankle? We suppose Jesus had brothers and sisters at home (Psalm 69: 7-8, Matt. 13:55f, and other texts). Would they also have seen some miracles? When Jesus said My time has not yet come, could He have meant it was not yet the right time to be public with His miracle-working powers?

If, on the other hand, Jesus’ power to work miracles had been hidden all those years, where did Mary get that certainty, to say Do whatever he tells you? She knew her firstborn was the Son of the Most High (Luke 1:32). Possibly this was enough to assure her Jesus could do something about the wine.

Sometimes when we’re in a tight spot, or have some pressing need, we can take Mary’s example and say, I know Jesus, I know who He is, and I’m certain He can do something about this.

Your thoughts or response / journal entry:

4

WE ARE NOT RATS . . ARE WE?

I remember a picture in a psychology book: a rat was wired to receive titillations in its brain, stimulations to some pleasure-center in its brain. The rat was literally delighted to press a lever to receive more hits. It seems we are biologically wired for this. There’s a pleasure-spot in the brain. Some pleasures can become addictions, or at least strong habits. A man can become like his dog wanting its tummy rubbed. More, more, gimme more.

This may be very Pavlovian, when a pleasure-response serves as a reward, and becomes a reinforcement. It may be a sexual climax, a drug high, the adulation of fans, success at the casinos, some other feel good intensity—the pleasure or thrill wants repeating.

In Michael Crichton’s 1972 novel The Terminal Man, neurostimulators (called brain pacemakers in the book) are inserted into a man’s brain in an experiment to cure or control his violent seizures. But the experiment goes awry, as they say, when the man’s acts of violence trigger pleasurable responses in his brain. Violence feels good!

If it feels good, do it is a very unreliable guide to conduct. The sadist, the ruthless dictator, the psychopath, the bully—what makes such people feel good? Clearly, these cannot guide us to live as we should, and even the non-threatening self-pleasing hedonist cannot escort us down a God-pleasing path.

When we live in Christ and for Christ, pleasure does not rule. We are not rats to be manipulated by stimulations; we are not pleasure-driven. We are driven mainly by our love for God, by what God wants us to do, and by what pleases God. When this is established, all our proper enjoyments and pleasures may be linked to God’s pleasure. In all things, we want to please Him.

We enjoy fishing, we have the know-how to fix Aunt Debbie’s car, we gather with friends to watch a favorite team trounce the opposition, we cook up our secret-sauce ribs, we write stories about frontier days, we tend to a garden, we take part in chess competitions, we make furniture in our woodshop—in everything, we hope to sense God’s pleasure. And we know pride (in our ribs sauce or chess skills) or excess (in our sports enthusiasm) can pull us away from His pleasure.

Even so, if I taste your ribs sauce, I might say, "Brother, you can be proud of this!" In all things, we are sensible.

Your thoughts or response / journal entry:

5

MAY I SIT HERE?

In the winter of 1959, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and Jiles Richardson (The Big Bopper) were glad to have seats on that small (very small) plane in Clear Lake, Iowa, and not have to freeze on a bus without heat in February. You can have my seat, someone said to Richie Valens. Fateful words.

You might know of others who were glad to have a seat, even beat out others for a seat, and met with tragedy.

Imagine Damocles excusing himself from the feast and some pompous guest making a joke, I might take your seat!

Damocles turns and looks at him, and says If you think that’s wise.

If you know the story of Damocles, you know his chair was not something to covet. A sword was suspended above his head, point down, held by a single horse-hair. The lesson of the story: Even when life seems a feast, or when someone seems privileged, there may be trouble looming. We don’t know what worries or burdens might hang over others like clouds.

In history, or myth, are there other seats we would not covet? Seats of doom, impending catastrophe, curse, bad luck, or some such? Abraham Lincoln’s seat in the Ford Theater? (Did people avoid sitting in it after he was shot? Was it removed? Or left as a