TADA!

I jotted and wrote, phrased and paragraphed, revised and edited and then edited some more. And more. And more and more and more. For years!

And then my book was ready -- TADA! -- a clean, pristine work of black type on white paper with perfect margins and spacing and paragraphs and pages. I was so excited!

But, I didn’t see the invisible, the hidden formats that needed to be deleted, the mistakes that were there even though no one else could see them. And before I could present my creation for publication, those unseen issues had to be addressed. Yikes! I only thought I was finished! Until I remove all the formatting problems, my manuscript isn’t finished at all. Work still to be done. Always, it seems.

And then I realized, after I hit the paragraph format key, that what I was seeing represented more than the multitude of mistakes I had once made. Those corrections and deletions also symbolized hours and days and weeks and months and years of hard work. Of striving to make my book better. Of paying careful attention to details -- to what was wrong, but also to what worked. In the unseen land of Microsoft Word, the dots and squiggly lines and arrows on my 60,000 words indicated the changes that I had made to make my writing better. TADA!

Isn’t there always more to see than what we see?

Once more, I’m back at work on my book, fixing the unseen issues that I can call up anytime on my computer. And when I don’t know understand how to fix something, all I have to do is push the help button. TADA! Yet again! 

Mmmm…. It’s possible that a pristine document won’t ever exist this side of heaven. But I think God knew that all along.

 “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus”

(Philippians 1:6 NIV).

“And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit”

(1 Corinthians 3:18 NIV).