{"id":54,"date":"2010-04-06T09:04:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T09:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/04\/gods-business-and-our-success.html"},"modified":"2010-04-06T09:04:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T09:04:00","slug":"gods-business-and-our-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/04\/gods-business-and-our-success.html","title":{"rendered":"God’s Business and Our Success"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Has your book been successful?”<\/p>\n

It’s a question I get asked regularly these days when I tell strangers that I am a writer? And I’m never quite sure how to respond. I could say, “No. It has sold less than 2,000 copies,” and that would be a true (although a bit of a conversation stopping) response. Numbers never lie, right?<\/p>\n

I guess it all depends on my notion of success. If it’s based on book contracts and royalties and bestseller lists, by all measures, my writing career so far is an utter failure. But if it’s based on whether I learned to write stories, with dialogue and themes and a cogent plotline and characters… if it’s based on taking risks, working hard, telling a story as truthfully and carefully and beautifully as I know how… if it’s based on the relationships that have grown out of that story, if it’s based on the responses of readers who have been blessed by the story… well, then, yes, it has been a success.<\/p>\n

Flannery O’Connor, my current muse, wrote to a writer friend of hers, “You do not write the best you can for the sake of the art but for the sake of returning your talent increased to the invisible God to use or not use as he sees fit”<\/i> (The Habit of Being<\/a><\/i>, 419). She also wrote, “When you write a novel, if you have been honest about it and if your conscience is clear, then it seems to me that you have to leave the rest in God’s hands. When the book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry about this is to take over God’s business”<\/i> (The<\/i> Habit of Being<\/i>, 143).<\/p>\n

What’s true of writing is true of any other good endeavor. Fill in the blank… “When you are a parent and your child goes to college, if you have been honest about it and your conscience is clear, then it seems to me that you have to leave the rest in God’s hands…” “When you teach a class…” “When you design a building…” “When you clean a kitchen…” “When you…”<\/p>\n

I want to measure success by the honesty of my labor and the clearness of my conscience and the desire to trust that the labor has been handed over as an offering. What happens next–whether it be considered success or failure–that’s up to God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Has your book been successful?” It’s a question I get asked regularly these days when I tell strangers that I am a writer? And I’m never quite sure how to respond. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}