Penelope Wilcock - The Road of Blessing: Finding Gods Direction For Your Life

Okay. When you write a book, whether someone came looking for you to write it, or you proposed it through an agent, or you are famous enough to turn up out of the blue with a manuscript, slap it down on a desk in an office somewhere and say: Interested? there is still a process to go through.

Even if your agent is nodding sagely and tapping his nose with his finger saying, Im sure we can place this one even if a little flame is kindling in the commissioning editors eyes (I think maybe weve got something here), so that you feel certain Yes! yes! yes! is surely forthcoming; there are hurdles. There are still hurdles. There are editorial committees and marketing men, there are meetings behind closed doors when decisions are made by men far too cool to wear suits and women with calm appraising eyes and a no-nonsense manner. No! no! no! may still be forthcoming.

Like you, I dream the world. I turn things over in my head, and I mosey along wondering why Im alive and looking into the Gospel like someone gazing into a clear lake, looking past what is only my own reflection and the clouds behind me to see the life and beauty hidden in its depths. Every now and then, I see something move, and I feel the reality of it, and I start to live it in the everyday; touch the live pulse of something that is more than a theory or a doctrine. A defining truth that gives structure and meaning to the relative chaos of my life.

Then, when Ive been on that trail for a while, and I know it works; know the truth of it down to the soles of my feet, know I can trust it I want to share it. I dont mean just a bright idea: I mean the sort of truth you can trust so completely that you can rely on it for your income; the sort of truth you can trust your children to; truth that you can lean on when you have to decide who to marry and how to live.

I dont always notice the principle forming at first. I get on the scent of it, follow it along, dream it and ponder it, turn it over and over, live into it and get familiar with it and only then do I notice: Hey! Wait a minute! This is something you may like to know about too!

Thats how The Road of Blessing came to be written.

It all started when I was chatting to my trusty editor about the business plans of a mutual friend. I said I was worried about her taking out a loan. I thought she needed to play things safe, as it could all very well go pear-shaped because she wasnt following the road of blessing. And he looked at me blankly and said those magical words: What do you mean?

Then, when I went to open a new bank account so that someone who had gulled me for rather a large sum of money could pay it back, I got chatting to the bank lady, who asked me what I do for a living. When I said, Im a writer, she wanted to know all about the book Id most recently written (so I told her), then all about the book I would be writing next.

Never, never tell people about the book you will be writing next. Never. Once youve told someone whats going to be in that book, you wont need to write it, and the flame in you will just die down to ashes. So I didnt tell her what would be in it. I only said, Well, its a book that explains how to live your life successfully, so that things go well instead of messing up all the time. It explains the principles that govern what makes things go well, and where you can find them in the Bible.

She sat up very straight, looked at me with shining eyes, and said: I need that book!

Meanwhile, behind closed doors in that office somewhere, the men who are too cool to wear suits and the no-nonsense women with the calm appraising eyes, were mulling over my proposal.

They saw the word blessing, and they saw that my trusty editor had explained: This is not the same as Prosperity Gospel teaching, but it set all their alarm bells clanging.

We do not not (they came back to us) want to publish a Prosperity Gospel book. Youll have to send in two sample chapters.

Well, that was okay, because I knew that this book had to be written. When the still small voice of the Spirit is whispering, when you want to teach other people about the way of the Gospel, when you are touching upon the truth that sets you free I mean, there isnt going to be a problem over a publisher, is there? It will find its own way up into the light. I know that, like the bank lady, you will need this book.

You will have seen go on, Im sure you have one of those dusty places by the roadside where they laid a heavy, tarry, pitch-black layer of tarmac. If you tried to dig it up with a garden fork, youd only bend the tines. If you tried to scratch it up with your bare hands, youd only hurt yourself. But there is something pushing the surface up into a little hump, cracking it open, splitting it right apart: a tiny, tender, soft, green, little plant, that you could bruise and crush and kill between two fingers. What is that power but the power of the Holy Spirit in a living thing: actually unstoppable.

So I hadnt too many worries about what I have to say here finding its way to the light: it will do, by one means or another. Its my privilege if it happens to be through me.

And, no this is not a Prosperity Gospel book.

This is a book for people who are willing to understand how to be happy in the lowest place, for people who are content to walk the badger tracks and find their peace in simplicity. This arises from the wisdom of Jesus Christ, who went the dusty way, the quiet way, the mountain way, in his sandals and his homespun robe.