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My Write Hand

My writing hand is weary, and it will get wearier.

I am in the midst of autographing five hundred copies of my new book, Nothing But the Truth. That is just today’s quota. I must sign another five hundred early next week and still more before I go out of town a few days later. Call it a writer’s postpartum blues. When the cases of your new book are delivered, you hallucinate that your work is done, but not so. The joy of seeing the final product is tempered by the realization that now you have to move the books off the stockroom shelves.

As one means to do that, in a recent appeal letter I promised a signed copy of Nothing But the Truth to anyone donating a hundred dollars to Catholic Answers. Most of me is delighted that so many have been so generous — the response has been better than anticipated — but my writing hand is wishing that the appeal letter had flopped. The hand thinks it has arthritis now. I am reminded that Paul wrote about our bodily members warring against one another, and here I have an all-too-literal example. My hand is not on good terms with the rest of my body.

Let me see if I can raise the situation to an analogy.

It is fair to say that those of us engaged in apologetics are tugged two ways. We enjoy what we do and rejoice when others seem to profit spiritually and intellectually from our efforts, but there is a part of us that would prefer that someone else take on the task. Sometimes apologetics is a literal pain, and our willingness to “offer it up” is not as well developed as it might be. Jonah’s attitude can be found in each of us: “Let someone else do it.” The Lord reminded Jonah that in Nineveh there were thousands “who do not know their right hand from their left,” and the Lord pitied them and made provision for them-through the reluctant Jonah, of all people.

So he uses, in lesser ways, today’s apologists, evangelists, catechists, and preachers. Some of us perceive a distinct calling to the work. Most of us — myself included — just seem to have backed into it. No matter. However lowly our motivations, however mixed (and mixed up) our ambitions and emotions, God makes use of our efforts for his own ends.

Usually we do not have any clear sense of how particular works or programs have panned out in the hearts and minds of the intended beneficiaries. It would be great to see a whole city, such as Nineveh, turn to the Lord, but that is not to be expected. Such indications of success are rarely given. We have to be content with hearing, every now and then, that something we said or wrote helped an individual here or a family there. That is more than enough, really, to keep the zeal alive. We should be grateful that God permits us-and limits us to-that degree of affirmation. If we were to receive any greater amount, we might fall into believing that the conversions and re-conversions were our own doing rather than his.

We need to recall that the Lord caused the bean plant to wither over Jonah, a telling reminder of who was — and is — the boss.

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