I suppose there are lots of reasons why people write and perhaps those and a few other reasons why people publish their writings. When I started writing “Community of Promise,” I didn’t think much about publishing. I had not set out even to be a novelist! I have been a minister and pastoral counselor/ psychotherapist for almost four decades, so naturally I have written countless newsletters and sermons. But a novelist? It never occurred to me that I might write fiction someday.
“Community of Promise” began with a single scene: Moses stands before the Jordan River, preparing to cross with the rest of the Israelites to inhabit the Promised Land – the goal of a lifetime. But he’s having second thoughts. His people had learned so much in the wilderness about being a community that derived its identity from a very personal relationship with the God who had rescued them and chosen them, and from their shared experience of surviving out there for 40 years. Would they forget all they had learned when their focus turned to the business of exterminating the residents of Canaan, to property ownership and government? Moses feared exactly that outcome! And he decided he couldn’t bear watching it happen to the people he loved.
From that germ of an idea, I got curious. What would Moses do if he felt the way I have described? Motivating me by that question, the story insisted on being discovered and written.
Now that “Community of Promise” is in print, the focus naturally shifts to the potential reader. Here is a question for you, dear potential reader, that I am now motivated to ask: “What if the Promised Land is more about quality of community than geography or ownership?”
If that question intrigues you, I invite you to read “Community of Promise” – and then, once you have read it, let me know how it has spoken to you. And, if you feel further motivated, invite others to read it, too.
Thanks,
Wayne Gustafson
www.entospress.com