Just one?

I will always be grateful I was able to find publishers for my six novels and my first non-fiction book, Soul Friend. Without these publishers, my writing journey would have been severely hampered. But I am also grateful I was able to produce my second non-fiction book, Becoming Me: Finding my true self in God, myself via Ingram Spark in 2016. This gave me freedom to include everything I wanted to include and also to set my own publishing time frame. Now, two years later, I still receive regular reports from Ingram Spark, detailing e-book and hard copy sales.

I love this company’s efficiency, but I often smile when I receive that professional-looking, emailed monthly report for e-book sales in particular. You see, as time has passed since the release of Becoming Me, I usually discover that just one person, someone somewhere in the world, someone I will probably never meet, has bought an e-book version of Becoming Me. Yes, that means a whole USD$2.40 my little book has earned for me as the publisher—what a fortune!

Yet I never feel disappointed with these reports. In fact, this one sale always touches me, as I try to visualise who this reader might be. I pray for them too. I pray that something in my little book might speak to their hearts and provide the word from God for them that they need. After all, I’m sure this one person matters to God.

But occasionally I receive a different sort of email about Becoming Me—one from a reader I often do not know, commenting on some aspect of the book that has been meaningful to them. Recently, a lady wrote how, while she related to so much of what I wrote, the thing that touched her most was one small paragraph where I describe how, for many years, I wrote weekly letters home to my parents interstate, keeping them up-to-date with all our family events. This lady shared how, for over fifty years, she had done the same, even when her mother became a dementia patient in a nursing home. She told me how some people thought she was strange to keep writing these letters. Yet, as she read my book, she felt she had found a companion, someone who understood. How blessed I felt that God had somehow comforted her through my book, even in this small way!

These people whose lives we touch, the ones and twos, do matter to God, don’t you think? Surely we see this in how Jesus often went out of his way to minister to just one person. Examples that come to mind readily are the woman who touched Jesus’ cloak (Matthew 9), Zacchaeus (Luke 19), the woman at the well (John 4), the man born blind (John 9), Lazarus (John 11) and Mary Magdalene outside the tomb (John 20).

People matter to God. You and I matter to God. In fact, God seeks each of us out, like that one lost sheep, and, once found, will never let us go. And that comforts me more than any words I may ever write.

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand, John 10:27-28

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I spy with my big eye someone beginning with …

Last night, I had the pleasure of playing a game of ‘I spy’ with our two granddaughters when they decided to keep me company in my study. Amy is eight, but Olivia is only five, so I wondered how she would go with working out which letters started some of the words. Much to my amazement, they both did brilliantly. And whenever I was allowed to have a turn at ‘spying’, in most cases I had no sooner said my letter than one or other of them would immediately pounce and guess it correctly.

As our game wore on, I found it increasingly harder to ‘spy’ something different in the room. Yet time after time, Amy and Olivia managed to come up with new ideas – objects I would never have thought of or that had completely escaped my notice, despite my spending hours each day writing in this same study. How did Amy think of ‘b’ for ‘building’ in a picture on my wall I had not looked closely at for ages, for example? And how did it occur to Olivia to try using ‘w’ for ‘words’ she had noticed typed on a sheet of paper and placed in a frame in one corner of the room? It was an amazing experience to see my study afresh through my granddaughters’ eyes. But even more amazing were the excellent observation skills they exhibited. They searched the whole room for something tricky – not one nook or cranny seemed to escape their notice.

Later as I reflected on this experience, it occurred to me that while my granddaughters’ ability to see so much truly amazed me, God’s powers of observation are so much more amazing still. There is not one thing I do, one place I go, one word I write that God does not notice. Nothing escapes God’s eyes. No corner of my heart is ever hidden from God. And nothing that befalls me escapes the one who sees all things. Yet this is by no means a scary thing for me. Instead, I find it so comforting that God can see at all times exactly what I am going through. And just as Hagar called the Lord ‘the God who sees me’ so long ago (see Genesis 16:13), so I am blessed to be able to give God that same title still today.

Jesus himself clearly showed us this all-seeing aspect of his Father in heaven. He notices Nathanael under the fig tree and knows all about him before Phillip calls him (John 1:48). He sees the man who was born blind sitting beside the roadside and heals him (John 9:1-7). He does not miss Zacchaeus way up in that sycamore tree and speedily invites himself for a visit (Luke 19:5). And even on the cross, he is aware of his mother nearby and makes sure she will be looked after (John 19:26-27).

I’m so glad I’m just as visible to God today as these people were to Jesus. I can be at peace, knowing God’s big, all-seeing eye is on me every moment of the day, watching over my welfare with loving concern. Right now, God is smiling at me and saying ‘I spy with my big eye, someone beginning with J’. And I know for sure that ‘J’ stands for Jo-Anne.

How about you? Can you hear God lovingly saying your initial too?

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