Our expressions of faith need the freedom of discovery.

A travel website wants me to do two more hotel reviews to get a specialist badge. Keep in mind that I’ve only ever done one hotel review, and that was at the request of a waiter with puppy eyes who told me reading reviews that mention him delights his mother, and earns him bonuses that he uses for college tuition. Who could resist that?

A  website I used to post work on changed their mission from encouraging Christians to grow as writers to paying contest winners to promote evangelical websites.

What do these two opportunities have in common?

I just finished Steven Pressfield’s quick read, The War of Art, Winning the Inner Creative Battle. He gave a great definition of a hack. It’s a writer who writes what the market is looking for instead of what is in his heart. Full disclosure: in my former life, I was a hack. It’s a legitimate career, but now that I have an opportunity to search my heart and see what’s there, I want to write more creatively. It’s my bad if I fall victim to writing for rewards.

When I search my heart, my desire to win people to Christ isn’t there. What is there is an intense desire to know God and to see my family and friends blessed in the knowledge of Christ, which I don’t find easy to articulate. For me, it isn’t retweeting tired platitudes, it’s dredging my heart for buried treasure that is hard work to get to and quite possibly offensive to believers and non believers alike.

Pressfield suggests an image that I am running with. Picture yourself looking through a dark glass, one palm placed on the cold pane. On the other side stand an angel (muse) who sees you clearly. He has his hand placed on the windowpane, on the opposite side, to match yours. He looks lovingly into your unseeing eyes and whispers “evolve.” Lean in, see if you can catch his scent or hear a bass tone that resonates in your soul.

I do believe that angels dwell among us and thrill to the possibility of pointing us in the direction of the Light. Our expressions of faith need the freedom of discovery.

If there is a visual artist out there reading this, would you tackle that angelic image? I’d love to see it.