Organizing Matter Unorganized

Writing--any kind of writing--is kin to the divine act that created the earth.

In the beginning, God decided to create the world on which we live. He did not create it out of nothing. Rather, after outlining a plan, He took unorganized matter and, using the laws of the universe, formed a planet with the right atmosphere, the right distance from our sun, plenty of water, and a moon large enough to create and control tides. He then seeded it with plants, animals, and us.

A writer follows the same pattern. He or she begins with an idea and begins to explore it. When enough related ideas begin to merge, the writer creates an outline--a plan that organizes those ideas into a coherent message. Then, applying the rules of grammar and rhetoric, the creator picks from the vast collection of words available in the language and organizes them into sentences, paragraphs, and content divisions that reflect the plan made at the beginning. In doing so, the writer seeds ideas that flower and populate in readers' minds, generating new ideas that themselves may become new conceptual worlds.

This is a divine act. The descriptions of the earth's creation in the holy scriptures are interesting in this regard. The writer of the Gospel of John, for example, noted that "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life: and the life was the light of men" (John 1:1-4).

In the book of Abraham, we learn that "at the beginning, . . . they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth" (Abraham 4:1). And they did it according to a plan, "according to all that which they had said concerning every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Gods had not caused it to rain upon the earth when they counseled to do them, and not formed a man to till the ground" (Abraham 5: 5).

I find a great deal of encouragement in this concept. If in writing I follow the divine pattern of creation, the end result is what God Himself saw in His own organized creations: "I, God, saw everything that I had made, and, behold, all things which I had made were very good" (Moses 2:31).

You will know, by the light within you, if what you have created is good. And it will be, if you follow the divine pattern in organizing your thoughts and your writing out of the unorganized matter before you.