Timothy's Thoughts

I watched an old Columbo episode the other day. As always, the episode begins with the focus on the killer, but in this case it was especially interesting because it begins with silence—five minutes of silence. There are the normal sounds, like water running and footsteps, but no one speaks for the first five minutes of the show. I found myself wondering if I had muted the television or something. Five minutes, in television, is a very long time to go without saying anything. We would normally expect that the first five minutes of a television show would take five pages of a script, but it is possible that the first five minutes of the show required less than one page. That tells us something about silence and the writing. They don’t mix very well and yet there is something about silence that can make a scene especially poignant. The writer may have said something like, “INTERIOR, DAWN: man removes power charge from shell casing and replaces with four strips of C4, while sweating prof...

In all art forms there is a line between method and content. It isn’t always easy to discern, but it is always there. A couple of days ago I showed you a stained glass window I have done. If you look, there are mistakes I made that wouldn’t be there if I had spent more time perfecting my technique, but the image you see, the Bible with the earth and the sun, is what makes it unique. With writing it is a little more difficult to separate method from content. Some people are complaining that writing workshops and writer’s conferences are creating writers who are producing manuscripts that are too similar rather than standing out as being unique. Part of the reason for this may be that they are crossing the line between teaching writers how to improve their methods and telling them what content to choose. People may choose to ignore the mistakes I made with the stained glass window. Others may be more critical, but all people will include the image as part of their basis for liking or dis...

Yesterday, was Christmas. If you read my blog, you may have noticed that I didn’t use the word Christmas —not one time. You may have been offended because I chose to say Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas . You might be upset with me for taking Christ out of Christmas, but what you can’t do is say that my blog post wasn’t Christ centered. It is probably the most Christ centered post I have had in a while. I say all that to make a point. For the past few years, I have seen many Christians who are upset about people saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas . A few years ago no one cared, but now people are upset about it. The irony is that people are ready to get up in arms about a lost man saying Happy Holidays or telling his employees to say Happy Holidays , but many of these people won’t say a word about this man’s need for salvation. The issue of Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays isn’t really about taking Christ out of Christmas. It is really about change. People...

December twenty-fifth is the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Happy Holidays! (More on that later.) Somehow, it isn’t what it used to be. When I was a child all I worried about was what new gifts I would be getting. Now I spend more time worried out how I’m going to find the time to buy gifts for everyone else and hoping they won’t be too upset with whatever I give them. Next year, I think I’ll just tell everyone that we can just exchange cash. I’ll hand someone a twenty dollar bill and they can hand it back. Even with all the stress that’s associated with it, I’m glad we have this day to celebrate the birth of our Savior. If that day had never taken place I would not have the opportunity to celebrate an even more special day, August 7, 1983, the day I accepted Jesus as my Savior. I hope that everyone reading this has a similar date that they can go back to and celebrate. We talk about the meaning of the season, but without having a day when you met Jesus there is no reason ...

A good review is always nice, it gives me a chance to brag a little. (I promise I won’t brag too much.) For the Love of a Devil received what I would call high praise in review published in the December 3, 2008 edition of the Baptist Trumpet . The editor, Diane Spriggs, wrote “Although it has been compared to Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers (which I have read), For the Love of a Devil , by Timothy Fish, is written in a modern setting that I could more readily understand and takes a decidedly different approach to this Old Testament love story. I enjoyed both books.” Mrs. Spriggs continues her review by writing about how she felt as she began reading the book, saying that she felt “a little uncomfortable” at first, but it made her think of her personal relationship with God. As she ends her review she states that “more than anything, when I finished the book I felt loved and pursued—not because of who I am, but because of who He is!” I am grateful to Mrs. Spriggs for publishing this...

I’ve heard many people talk about writers block. I think the most likely cause is stress. Writer’s block is a little like what a speaker might experience if he goes to a meeting and someone asks him to get up and say a few words. I remember one of my high school English teachers talking about how to overcome writer’s block. The suggestions weren’t all that satisfying. The one I remember is to use brainstorming to come up with some ideas. We had brainstorming exercises we had to do. I hated that. I think the best thing a person can do when she can’t come up with anything to write is to just relax. That’s hard to do when you have to have something written within the next day or hour or whatever, but all good ideas come from thinking about other things than our need to write something. Simply put, writer’s block occurs when the writer is trying too hard.

Our church is building a new gym. We decided to put a three foot stained glass window on the front of the building. I have a small amount of experience with stained glass and I do mean small, so I had the opportunity to design and build the window. The result of my efforts is show here. I went with this design because it reflects the primary mission of our church. our mission is to carry the word of God to our world. Now that it's done, maybe I can go back to trying to finish some of the other things that I need to finish.