I’m trying to write a post. But I can’t.

I review drafts to see whether anything can be resurrected. There are 44 drafts. Some are complete, waiting only for the right time. Some are a sentence or two, reflecting a thought I want to capture. But none of them is right.

I flip through my journal, a place where I keep notes and fragments and lists and goals. Nothing triggers anything.

I look at a couple of things I’m reading these days. Psalm 1 was almost a class on Sunday. Psalm 114 was an insight this morning, making a connection to Exodus 17 that I hadn’t seen before. Isaiah 9-10 are going to turn into a post sometime soon. I’m reading through Isaiah and those two chapters have captivated me. But I’m not done reflecting yet.

I find it hard to concentrate, feeling some pressure that seems like stress but realizing it is actually the pressure of having shoveled the driveway twice in twelve hours. And knowing that I was up too late reading about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It seems he never wondered what to write. He wrote sermons and books and lectures and letters, all while fighting the growing influence of Hitler.

I write to Nancy. “Pray for me,” I say. “I’m trying to write.”

And then I have my headline.

Often, you see the conclusions here, the result of the writing. And that’s what we see when we look at other people and their productivity and their success. And we try to be the conclusion that they arrive at. But being a follower of Jesus is only partially about the conclusion. It’s a lot about the process.

When Jesus says that making disciples means teaching people to obey everything he commanded, he means teaching how the obedience happens. Which means drawing back the curtains.