Creating Vistas

Sitting in front of a computer typing or reading in my favorite chair is not my wife’s picture of the adventurous life she had anticipated for us in our retirement years. She hoped to travel to the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and other exotic locations to experience the flavors and textures of cultures we have never visited. On one occasion, she informed me that she didn’t understand how I could sit couped up in my home office reading and writing all day when we could get out and experience the world. After thinking about her honest characterization of what I cherish doing, I responded like this: “Honey, when I’m reading and writing stories like My Father’s Friend and Her Sacrificial Gift, I’m learning about and creating vistas into other worlds in my mind’s eye. I am as far away from here as I can be, imagining the context and complexities of the worlds inhabited by the characters I create for my stories and books. Believe me, I am not in Tampa while I’m writing. I’m delving into the hearts and minds and cultures of people everywhere to reveal the lessons of God’s Word to those who can’t picture the significance of various passages of the Bible.”

My writing aims to bring home to my readers a contemporary example of what passages in the Bible signify but remain cloudy in their relevance to people so far removed from First Century culture and tradition. Much of what I hope to accomplish is the equivalent of what Charles Dickens did for the meaning of Christmas when he wrote A Christmas Carol. His portrayal of the meaning of Christmas is so vivid that few of us can comprehend Christmas without referring to his writing. That’s what I want to accomplish with my stories about the meaning of various passages of Scripture. I hope you enjoy them.