INSPIRATION

 Inspiration

The writer wound a foolscap page into his Olivetti typewriter and awaited inspiration. Sipping his fusion tea, he stared at the blank sheet. His mind began to drift as a cool breeze came through an open window. He found himself in an orchard, or maybe it was a forest. Suddenly, the silence was broken in two! He came to his senses, all his senses: hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, and touching. High alert! The rat-a-tat of a machine gun? No, it was more like friendly fire of a woodpecker tapping. The WWII veteran paused, took a deep breath and sipped his fruity tea to steel his nerves. He then resumed rapidly punching the keys of his typewriter. The little hammers swung back and forth, beating his story into shape, a story of unrequited love, but with a twist in the tale.

There was a man and a woman, and they were naked. She plucked a piece of fruit from a tree and gave it to him, or was it a hand grenade with the pin removed? They both ran for cover. There was a breeze that shook the leaves on the trees and chilled their hearts. A voice, an inspired voice, called out to them. Ice crystals began to form in their bloodstreams. So engrossed in his story, the writer struggled to get his bearings. It was as if he really was there. He tried a breathing exercise. In steady rhythm, he breathed in and he breathed out. His racing heart began to slow down.

Situational awareness set in. The writer now knew exactly where he was. Meanwhile, back to his story. To no avail, the man and the woman had tried to camouflage themselves. However, the voice knew exactly where they were and kept on crying out to them. Rather than surrender, they tried to save themselves by blaming everything and everyone, other than themselves. The voice told them to come out into the light because the war is over. The couple felt compelled to comply.

The writer considered the pithy weight of those words, ‘the war is over’ as he un-scrolled the full page with zip. Full of inspiration, with a clean sheet back in the typewriter, he began joyously tapping away. Yes, he thought, the man and the woman are now reconciled to each other and to their enemy, the one whose voice they had fled from. The voice gave them glad tiding and some clothes to wear. They were now fully clothed and in their right minds, as they were led out of the orchard. That place had now become as a dangerous jungle to them.

The writer loved a happy ending. Satisfied with his story, he now settled down to the hard work of word-checking and editing. He looked up the word ‘inspiration’. Had he used it correctly? He immediately thought of a verse of Scripture, ‘All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.’ He grabbed his concordance of the Bible. Inspiration (theopneustos, from two words, theos and pneo) ‘God-breathed’.

The army veteran’s heart began to race again as he considered the gravity of the concept that all Scripture is God-breathed. ‘Does that include Genesis? Will God, therefore, hold me guilty for plagiarising His work, for treating it in such a cavalier manner?’ In a panic, he wanted to jump out of the open window and run up the street, anywhere, to escape his feelings of anxiety as he lost the context of reality. However, just then, the cool breeze once more wafted in the window. Then he remembered what he had written. ‘The war is over!’ The war within, with his woman, with his neighbour, with his enemy, but especially with the voice that had called him out of darkness and into the light.