September 2022
Table of Contentsby Dena Netherton Dull Scholars in Spiritual Arithmetic by Jan Anderson by Lydia Harris God's Math + Your Writing = Unexpected Blessings by Sonja Anderson by Liz Holtzman | Northwest Christian AuthorEditor: Dena Netherton Assistant Editor: Liz Holtzman The Northwest Christian Author is published quarterly by the Northwest Christian Writers Association nwchristianwriters.org
Writers' Guidelines: Non fiction articles on writing themes are welcomed: how-to, motivational, interview/profile. Complete article, 350 - 700 words, with a short bio. Submit articles to the editor at dena.netherton@gmail.com for consideration.
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Dear NCWA Members,
We are so excited about this upcoming season. Last year’s spring season culminated with a wonderful Renewal Conference. If you were not able to attend, you can still order segments or the entire conference to listen to at your convenience. You can find more information about ordering on our website.
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At our September meeting, we began with updates about our next Renewal Conference in May, Ready, Set, Write! I hope you are planning to attend. We are bringing in nationally acclaimed speakers, writers, editors, and agents.
We want all of you to consider how you can get involved in NCWA. On our website you will find multiple opportunities to contribute a devotional, write an informational article about the craft of writing, announce your latest book contract or book launch, sign up to speak for our writer high-five segments, and more.
Additionally, we are planning extra Zoom segments where Dori Harrell (one of our editors) will teach classes on improving our writing, how to properly format your manuscript, how to determine which genre your book is, and other topics. There will be a small fee.
Each month, members make suggestions about how we can improve our meetings. Of course, the needs of Zoom attenders and in-person attenders are different, so sometimes it takes a while for us to implement changes that help both groups. Please be patient with us. We’re trying!
And finally, don’t forget to pray for NCWA and its members, that we get in alignment with our heavenly Father and write to glorify Him.
In His service,
Dena Netherton, President
Dena Netherton is the author of seven novels and numerous articles and short stories. She began her professional life as a classically trained singer/musician performance artist who transformed into a teacher, a musical theater director, and a Director of Children’s Ministries. Her faith-filled and artistic background easily led to a life of creating compelling and suspenseful stories for Christian readers. Find more about her books, her faith, and her scripture songs on her website: https://denanetherton.me and Amazon and Goodreads.
I really love math—especially algebra. I love making things balance on each side of an equation sign, and the more detailed and odd looking the equation, the more packed with signage and symbols, the more I like it. There is something inexplicably satisfying about proving that x does, in fact, equal y over z.
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Would that my heart felt equally pleased when I turn to the account books of God’s economy. I am sad to report that I often prove to be a dull scholar in spiritual arithmetic. I just can’t seem to get the bottom line to add up properly. How is it possible that servants are examples of success, meekness inherits kingdoms, and losing life is a means of finding it? It seems as outlandish as the land of Phantom Tollbooths—so upside down and on its head.
Yet, it is God’s economy, which means that any other standard is a counterfeit, an airy substitute that can’t back its boasting. And in this economy, there is no law of competition or supply and demand. No, in this economy there is one and only one law—the law of love. And it has, from eternity past, been the case that God’s kingdom is marked by love. In his outstanding book Delighting in the Trinity, Michael Reeves drives this point home when he observes that a non-trinitarian god could not reign in a kingdom of love. He says, “Single person gods, having spent eternity alone, are inevitably self-centered beings.” If such gods existed, this would be perfectly true. They have only their own fuzzy-filled navels to contemplate. They are ever inward, never outward.
But the true God is in essence one but in persons three, and that is the great mystery of His beauty and His love. But what is love? Poets define it in all kinds of ways and philosophers a host of others, but the Bible makes it clear that love involves death—a dying to one’s self to benefit another, leaving yourself so that someone else might profit. Now that’s a strange economy, and done properly, that’s a tough addition! But such a love is at the very heart of God’s kingdom, and when God’s Spirit takes up residence in a man, reproducing that love so that it might look like its source becomes one of His primary tasks. Thus, wherever a Christian is, that real estate should be marked by love.
We are a group of writers, but we are a unique group of writers, for we are Christian writers, and therefore we are ambassadors for Christ and His kingdom before we are anything else. Many of you in this organization have been exceptional examples of selflessness and love to one another—probably when you weren’t even aware of it, and while we ought to always encourage one another to keep pen to paper, we have an even higher calling to encourage one another to love. In 2 Corinthians 5:14 Paul writes that the love of God constrained him. May it be so for us, too, so that loving others to the point of forgetting ourselves is not a strange or novel thing among us but rather evidence of heavenly arithmetic.
Jan Anderson lives with her husband of 40 years in Bothell, WA. They have four adult children and three adorable grandchildren. From the time she could talk, poetry delighted her, and to this day she can get lost in the beauty of apples of gold in settings of silver.