God Is the First and Best Author
This week, please welcome a guest blogger to Shining the Light: P.S. Patton, author of The Withering, a speculative fiction novel about three orphaned teens whose world has reached its end, but the fight for their future has only just begun. The Withering releases June 26 and is on preorder on Amazon here. —Jessica Brodie
A guest post by P.S. Patton, author of The Withering
The first time I visited another world was my initial trip into Narnia as a boy. I’m not entirely certain, but I believe it was my late Great “Grumpa” Don and Great Grandma June who gifted me the complete box set of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia around 20 years ago or more, a gift I continue to treasure to this day. It was read through several times during my early years, and I am currently more than halfway through reading the series to my own children.
Once I’d grown a little older, I found new worlds to visit, most notably Middle-Earth, Malacandra, and Perelandra. In each of these worlds, I discovered something hidden and true beneath the text, yet I didn’t understand fully what I was detecting viscerally until my high school years, at which point I dove headlong into the Bible and began to absorb eternal truths that felt familiar, albeit much more real.
One thing became clear to me as I read God’s word: God is the first and best author. The most intricate plot conceived by man is but a dim reflection of God’s shining example, which we are blessed to have standing ever before us. J.D. Salinger’s use of symbolism and metaphor seemed to me profound until I saw how the Holy Spirit did things—using real human lives, legendary dynasties, and the rise and fall of empires as living types, symbols, and metaphors, with His people and their enemies alike recording it all for every generation to wonder at.
There was never a time in my life as far as I can recall in which I did not believe wholeheartedly in the one true living God, but there is a time in every thinking person’s life when they must decide whether or not they believe, and more importantly why they do or do not. It is not an unhealthy thing to question one’s faith, so long as you are honest with yourself in diligently seeking satisfactory answers to those questions. If you are, you will find that Jesus is faithful to His promise that if you seek Him, you will find Him.
You may find Him in ways you wouldn’t expect—on YouTube, on the silver screen, in the pages of a fantasy novel. You may find Him in your study of quantum mechanics, in the behavior of photons, in the “Big Bang,” in the gravity which tethers us to this earth, or in the aerospace technology which propels us beyond its atmosphere. You may discover Him in the writing of a song, in the painting of a mural, in the construction of a building, in the taking of a photograph, or in the repair of a faulty appliance. You may encounter Him in holography, in the coding of software, video games, and apps; in the studies of biology, chemistry, physiology, archaeology; or in the age-old process of winemaking. You might see Him in the beauty of a sunset, in the vastness of the ocean, in the solitude of the forest, in the fortitude of a mountain, in the mystery of a dream, in the brilliance of a starlit sky, or in the perfect still of the darkest night.
Whatever your place in life, whatever your passion, whatever your profession, whatever inspires you, whatever you love, one truth unifies all these things: God did it first, and He did it better. We are made to create, to build, to organize, to curate, to inspire, to perform, to teach, to serve, to heal, and to love, because that is Who God is, and whether one believes it or not, we have all been made in His image.
So whatever it is you do, be sure you do it with passion, be sure to do it well, and most of all, make sure you do it for the Kingdom.
P.S. Patton, author of The Withering, is a speculative fiction author and songwriter based on the Central Coast of California. A 30-something husband and father, he spent his early years reading superhero comics, writing and illustrating comics of his own, learning the secrets of the ooze, the balance of the force, the deeper magic from before the dawn of time, awakening the wind fish, shooting marbles and slamming pogs, collecting and trading Pokémon cards, rescuing Hyrule, becoming the Hero of Time, searching the scriptures, studying eschatology, and feeling just as—if not more—fascinated with the worlds of Shakespeare, Dickens, Melville, and Steinbeck, as with those of Rowling, King, Lewis, and Tolkien. He resides in the small town of Templeton, California, with his wife, Andrea, his two children, Sophia and Phin, and a rambunctious Boston Terrier named Rocket, who more than lives up to his name. Learn more or join his mailing list at https://www.pspatton.com/ and connect with him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook
