Rachel Starr Thomson

Years ago, when I was still writing and e-mailing out the essays known as Letters to a Samuel Generation, I decided to write a series on the Lord’s Prayer. The resulting nine articles were some of my favourites — they just expressed so much about who God is to me and what it means to be a believer living God’s purposes in the world. Eventually I compiled them into a little book called Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord’s Prayer.

The year after that, my best friend Carolyn and I were tossing around ideas for a small-scale ballet production, and we realized we could use narrations from Heart to Heart, choose songs that reflected on the themes of the Lord’s Prayer, and create a whole performance around that. So we did. It’s called Father, and right now, we’re touring it in Southern Ontario for the second summer in a row.

In churches, schools, and other venues, I get to stand up and share words that come from my heart with people. And afterwards, I’m so blessed to hear the impact they can have. It’s a surreal experience for me, a writer with all the typical loner habits and instincts. But I love it.

Tonight, we’re going to share Father with a community that desperately needs to be reminded of the love of our Father God, of his kingdom coming, and of the promise of deliverance from evil. In this community, a little girl was recently abducted from her school and murdered. The killers have been caught. But that doesn’t stop the hurting.

The church that’s hosting us will be holding a funeral service tomorrow. Tonight, they’ve invited hundreds of people to come and see Father. In the audience will be teachers from the little girl’s school, and others who knew her — who have been so deeply affected by this tragedy.

Moments like this remind me that nothing is all about me. Not writing, which sometimes feels so insular. Not performing, which can tend to focus attention on the performers. No — even these things are about community. They’re about the powerful messages God has for us to share and the love He wants us to give to others. They’re about mourning and healing and hope.

You can pray for us tonight — and join us in praying. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.”

Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord’s Prayer is taking on a whole new life as the basis for a dance production called Father, which will tour parts of southern Ontario this summer. It is being produced by Soli Deo Gloria Ballet, a new company starting up in the Niagara Region.

… which is a formal way of saying “I’m really excited” :). The break between semesters with WriteAtHome has meant, not a break from work (that never happens), but a chance to focus on my newest venture: a ballet company. No, I don’t personally dance. So far, I do a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. I also get a lot of creative input.

For Father, we’ve taken select, poetic readings out of Heart to Heart that really get to the center of our day-to-day relationship with God. We’ve put them together with contemporary music like “Small Enough,” a duet between Nichole Nordeman and Fernando Ortega, and Rebecca St. James’s “Come Quickly Lord.” All of this is brought to life by gorgeous choreography and talented dancers.

Our goal for Father mirrors our goal for Soli Deo Gloria as a whole. We want to take the timeless truths of the gospel and present them in a way that makes people sit up and pay attention and go, “Wow, I’ve never thought about it that way before.” We want to use all this art and beauty to show people how beautiful God is.

If you’re in southern Ontario, we hope to see you this summer!

Check out our related Web sites:

www.littledozen.com/h2h.html – The Heart to Heart page, including chapter excerpts.

www.solideoballet.com – The Web site for Soli Deo Gloria Ballet. (Christian dancers, we need you! Check out our Auditions page.)

* * *

I’ve got a heap of writing-related news coming, too, so stay tuned!

My book Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord’s Prayer is currently a featured resource on Ungrind.org!

Ungrind also recently published an article of mine, entitled While You Wait, Rebekah. Follow the link to read it. It uses the life of the matriarch Rebekah as an example of “making the most of the meantime”–the waiting periods in our lives.

My thanks to Ashleigh Slater, editor of Ungrind, for creating a great webzine and allowing me to contribute to it :).

I had several epiphanies last night. One of them was that the sales/introduction page for Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord’s Prayer on my Web site was a boner. I’ve rewritten it entirely. Stop by and let me know what you think :).

Any view of Christianity as fire insurance or a feel-good morality tale is missing the reality of the kingdom. The kingdom of God is that place wherein God has His unhindered rule, and that place is in our hearts. “The kingdom of God is within you,” Jesus told a listening crowd. And to live in accordance with His kingdom necessitates a total change of life. “Repent,” Jesus told the people of Galilee, “and believe the gospel.” Belief in the good news of the king’s arrival in our world goes hand in hand with repentance: with a complete about-face in our way of being, an absolute surrender to God’s rule and reign.

The fact is, the kingdom of God runs totally counter to anything we have learned growing up in the world. Jesus, the Servant-King, is the heart and center of His realm, and His character defines its laws and principles. There is no room in the kingdom for our self-serving games, our divisions and petty offenses. The King is love, and oneness, and grace. In the world, we preserved ourselves by fear and cunning; Jesus calls us to trust and childlikeness. In the world, we value possessions and position; in the kingdom, we value people and poverty of spirit.

In a sense, we who have repented and believed the gospel are outposts of heaven. We are a new and living world within an old and dying one. It is ours to walk in the light, to live as children of the day, to worship the True King and oppose the rebellious stewards who have tried to claim this realm for their own. To the darkness, we are the worst sort of traitors, because we dare to live eternal lives while the world tumbles ever nearer its ultimate destruction. The Bible speaks truly when it says that we are at enmity with the world. But at the same time, we are the world’s hope: because we have not just been left here to wile away the hours until Christ returns. Rather, we have been left here as colonists with a mission: to preach, as Jesus and His disciples did, that the kingdom of God has come, and that if we will surrender ourselves to the King, God has promised to “deliver us from the power of darkness, and translate us into the kingdom of his dear Son.”

* * *

I just finished putting a complete collection of chapter excerpts from Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord’s Prayer up on Little Dozen. Come check it out!