Called Into Central Casting by God

Here's an imaginative piece of writing by a friend who is part of the Christian Writers Guild. Used by permission.

God's Central Casting for a Writer; If you were God, would you have chosen Dr. Luke as a writer?

God: "Sit down, young man. I hear you want to be cast in the role of a
writer. What makes you think you could become an effective writer?"

Luke: "Sir, I've been a doctor for 20 years and have observed a lot of
people. I've had some weird characters show up in my doctor's office and
they would make great anecdotes for an article or book. I've also seen some
miraculous healings. I think I could write an inspirational book that would
sell thousands of copies."

God: "Well, what I am really looking for is someone who will tell the story
of two of the greatest men of the past 50 years. I think it's time for a
fresh retelling of the story of my son Jesus. Now to do that you will have
to forget about your experiences, your miraculous healings. You will have to
write only about Jesus' remarkable birth and three years of ministry. The
miracles would be the ones he performed. Do you think you are willing to
sacrifice your own great story for that of another, my son Jesus?"

Luke: "I guess that means travel and research instead of just telling my own
great story. But since this Jesus did miracles greater than I have done I'm
willing to tackle this project."

God: "I've got another possible assignment for you, a really quite different
one. There's this man Paul, whom I rescued from persecuting Christians and
put on the road as my evangelist. To get his story you will need to become a
member of his team, go hungry and thirsty with him on his journeys, become
incredibly tired as you move from place to place, experience some quite
vicious attacks on him for his message, see him being set upon by angry
mobs. You might call this an assignment to a war zone, where you will know
from personal experience what it means to attack the forces of evil in a
variety of cultures. But what you will need to record is not only the
personal experiences of team members, but also what happens when people come
to faith in Christ in hostile cultures and organize themselves into
churches. Are you ready for an assignment into the war zone?

Luke: "Do I get to practice medicine while on the road with this evangelist?
You know, I need to keep up my certification as a physician, and that
requires a certain number of hours of hands-on medical experience."

God: "I think you'll get that experience just patching up my servant Paul
and his associate Silas! You'll have a whole range of wounds to take care
of. You'll possibly have to practice a little psychiatry because Paul will
sometimes get down on himself and need a little help with his depression."

Luke: "By the way, what's a church?"

God: "I'll let you experience a whole series of churches and let you make up
your own mind as to what a church is like. I want you to experience it
before you write about it."

Luke: "So who pays me?"

God: "Your pay will come out of central treasury, distributed by the people
who come to faith in Christ through the ministry of Paul. Sometimes you will
have to rely on the earnings of Paul as he plies his trade as tentmaker. You
might even be able to earn some on the side by applying your medical
knowledge to the needs of people with all kinds of wounds. You'll not be
writing about those opportunities, since the focus of the book is to be the
work of God through Paul and others on his team. Your job is to observe and
record."

Luke: "When do I start?"

I just read the biography of another medical doctor God called into central
casting. Dr. M. R. DeHaan was an incredibly good doctor in Michigan,
committed to his patients in ways that were often life-threatening. He was
truly beloved as physician. Despite caring for many patients during the flu
pandemic in the early 1920s he survived to keep on practicing medicine. But
he heard God's call in central casting and transitioned into the pastoral
ministry after seminary and into radio during the Great Depression. In time,
the Radio Bible Class became an international ministry, with son and
grandson following in Dr. DeHaan's steps in what is now RBC Ministries. You
might call him a modern Dr. Luke, since he wrote many books as well.

What has been your experience as you were called into central casting by
God? For me, the one that set my direction in life happened in a mining
company warehouse and First Aid office in northern British Columbia, Canada.
Every evening for a week after the miners had collected their supplies and
gone underground I read Scripture and prayed for direction for my life. The
Lord took me to Ezekiel and the call to stand in the gap for Him, then to
Moses and how God overcame his objections to God's call. And I read the
story of Charles Spurgeon in Shadow of the Broad Brim.

That week I committed myself to serving God on a worldwide basis to the
maximum of the ability He had given me. I did not realize what that really
meant, but lying in a hospital bed only weeks later with a split femur from
a mountain climbing accident I enrolled in a correspondence course entitled
"The Beginning Christian Writer." Two and a half years later, after
graduating from Bible college, God called me through one of his servants to
be the founding editor of a denominational weekly. I had moved from milking
cows and tending strawberries and raspberries to a typewriter, the start of
what became a worldwide outreach as writer.

Let me again ask the question: What happened when you were called into
central casting by God? What change in life direction did that precipitate?

Les Stobbe, Director
International Christian Writers