Witness

When I hear the word witness, several images come to mind. I think of actress Kelly McGillis sitting on a bench at the 40^th Street train station in Philadelphia, dressed in Amish garb which was useless in concealing the beauty of her striking eyebrows. I think, too, of the time I sat in the backseat of my dad’s blue Chevy Impala after he and my mother had gone inside an unfamiliar house on one of our church’s weekly visitation nights. I wasn’t sure who they were visiting or why. The folks inside may have needed to hear about Jesus, or they may have already known about Jesus but backslid. I just knew my parents had responded to a call to go out witnessing.

When I was a freshman in college I, too, was sent out as a witness. I had joined a campus fellowship and, on one night for no reason that was apparent to me, the leadership decided to pair up the men and women in the group and send them out to share on campus. Armed with gospel pamphlets I, with my partner who I’d never before met, set out to do our modern-day Paul and Silas thing. We descended on some poor student in the engineering building who, on a Friday night, was doing what he had paid considerable tuition dollars to do. My partner began his sales pitch for Jesus, but the student politely interrupted to tell him, “No thanks.” He already had one.

True story: Years later, after I started going to a different fellowship group--the one the good-looking guys on campus attended--I met and married that dedicated engineering student.

Witness. According to Merriam-Webster, the word witness can mean a number of things. It may act as either a noun or a verb. As a noun, it might mean one who has personal knowledge of something. As a verb it can mean to testify to, to furnish proof of, to have personal or direct cognizance of or, to bear witness.

During TheHigh Calling writing retreat I attended at Laity Lodge last weekend, I heard and thought quite a bit about the idea of bearing witness. Author and speaker David Dark encouraged us to write and tell the truth about the things we see, “to expand the space of the talk-aboutable.” As we engage in the call and response, he said, of telling and receiving one another’s stories, we bear and receive witness about truth. Artists and writers who are followers of Jesus  bear witness through image and song and story to That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched. (I John 1:1, NIV)

Over the course of the weekend, I sensed an expansion in my ideas about the meaning of the word witness. My thinking was drawn away from memories of paperback pamphlets and sales pitches toward the awareness that I am at all times and in all places bearing witness to something. As a writer, I have the opportunity to bear witness through my words to my redeemer, the One toward whom all stories flow. And I don’t have to do it, in fact it might be better if I didn’t try to do it, through crafting sexy sales pitches.

At times I have, as I assume most writers do, wrestled with doubt and insecurity about whether or not I should be writing; whether or not I am any good at it. It is important, Dark said, to receive the witness of others, to believe and accept their little affirmations. If they tell you your words have helped or healed, or pointed them toward all that is good and true, believe them. Tell your stories. Receive those of others. The world needs them.

I make no promises about this kind of witness helping you find a handsome husband like I did, but you never know. But maybe telling your stories might help you, or someone who reads them, fall more deeply in love with Jesus.

David Dark is the author of The Sacredness of Questioning Everything. He blogs at Peer Pressure is Forever.

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