Starting 2017 with a Bang!
Psalm 133 – The Message (MSG)
A Pilgrim Song of David
133 1-3 How wonderful, how beautiful,
when brothers and sisters get along!
It’s like costly anointing oil
flowing down head and beard,
Flowing down Aaron’s beard,
flowing down the collar of his priestly robes.
It’s like the dew on Mount Hermon
flowing down the slopes of Zion.
Yes, that’s where God commands the blessing,
ordains eternal life.
As the above scripture states, there is something sweet and beautiful when we meet together as brothers and sisters in Christ. As writers this is especially true and on Tuesday January 3rd 2017, Uganda Faith Writers Association was more than blessed to host Marion Osgood, who holds the position of Overseas Support at the Association of Christian Writers in the UK.
Marion, who is a biography writer, was in the country for a Christian new year event which takes place at Namboole Stadium in Kampala, Uganda, in which her husband was preaching. She graciously took the time out to come and visit us at the UFWA offices in Kisaasi to share the word and fellowship with us.
Being a researcher, Marion has a special affinity for the gospel of Luke and she shared from chapter one, verses one to four. Luke was a physician and therefore someone who would have been meticulous and thorough in his research and account of Jesus’s life. From those four verses Marion was able to show us that we, as writers, can learn a lot from Luke, including: bringing our own unique perspective to the things that we have witnessed God do and to write these events in an orderly, accurate manner. We can also learn the discipline of good writing and good editing as well as learn to achieve a certainty of the things we know to be true about God in our lives. We learned that as writers, sometimes we can be ‘swept away’ by the need to be popular or to gain some form of monetary reward but, as Luke teaches, we should have our principles set in our hearts and understand that superficiality is not being true to our calling in the Lord. The members of Uganda Faith Writer’s Association were present and engaged in the session and they seemed to gain a real sense of purpose for 2017.
This visit by Marion was a fitting way to start the year, both as individuals and as an organisation. We not only want to be more productive this year but we want to commit ourselves to being the writers God called us to be: accurate, true to our testimony, but also committed to good research. What it takes is owning our calling as writers and learning to record whatever we believe God is showing us to write, whether it is fiction, poetry, nonfiction etc. keeping a journal or a writer’s diary helps with this. Sometimes we think we need to be ‘inspired’ to write something but, as Marion said, revelation will come as we are faithful to begin the writing & remain committed to it.
We trust that this year will see more from us as an organisation and as individuals. Over the next few days and weeks we will be updating you about our books which have arrived in Uganda and which we will be promoting diligently. We will also be writing more stuff for our magazine, WANDIIKA, and you will be hearing a lot more about that.
We would like to take the opportunity to wish you a blessed, delightful and prosperous 2017 full of many adventures in writing and beyond.
