BOM: How the Idea Germinated

I had forgotten about this, but I just found an email in my file dated Aug. 6, 2001. I wrote to some friends:

"As I was reading my Bible this morning, I cam across a verse that brought me up cold: 'Look now, I myself am he! There is no god other than me! I am the one who kills and gives life; I am the one who wounds and heals; no one delivers from my power!"

"I've read this before, but was always assuming God meant that he wounded and/or killed his enemies . . . but now I'm beginning to think he wounds us at times, to work his will in our lives. . . . often we short-change God's sovereignty by assigning 'bad things' to God's permissive will instead of his perfect will, and lately I've been thinking a lot about that. We know he loves us and cares for us, but as I've been considering God as parent, I've come to see that love and care often mean doing things that cause me, the child, to hurt and feel anger and pain.

"Have you seen the commercial with the kids who look into the camera and say, 'I thought you were the worst parents in the world. I hated you. You snooped on me . . . Thanks, mom and dad."

"Ah . . . would it not be human for us to feel the same way toward God when he wounds and heals us?

"I feel a novel theme coming on . . ."

And so I did. That verse, that email, became the idea that bloomed into The Pearl. Sometimes God leads us through the valley of the shadow of death. He does that to my protagonist, Diana, but she doesn't want to go there . . . and so the drama begins.

Tomorrow: The research

~Angie