Wordle

I discovered something epic on the web. Well. I've discovered /lots/ of epic things. But this was pretty cool. If you go to wordle.com, you can make this thingummy called a "word cloud", which basically measures how many times you use certain words in the document you upload and generates word sizes proportional to the number of times used.. Writers use it to determine the sorts of words that pop up the most in their novel.

This wordle is mine, from my pirate novel affectionately titled "Avenger's Quest". I was going to use the wordle for the book I'm working on right now (a mysterious story called "Theo"), but the pirate one is complete. Apparently I use "one" and "eyes" almost as often as I use the names of the two main characters, Alec and Tran.

And then, as I was sitting here thinking, "Hm...could I honestly fill up a whole blog entry with mindless babble about wordle?", it hit me.

What would our lives look like in wordle? It would be tempting to think that our names would be the biggest words /ever/, because it's our lives, right, but really, what would there be.

If I did a wordle of my life, I would want the biggest word to be "God" ("Jesus" would also be acceptable). I would want the words "faithful", "servant", and "joy" to be repeated so many times in my life story that they were bigger than "money", "writing", or even "fun". I'm afraid "sin" would be larger than I would like, as well as "pessimist", "grumpy", and "hurtful". Can't you just picture, on Judgement Day, God glancing in the book for your name, ticking at a few keys, and pulling up an image like the one above?

"Hmm..." he'd say. And you'd wince, because you KNOW what's on there. All the foolishness and frippery and novels and movies and things that "seemed important at the time". Oh look. The money you didn't tithe because you rounded down. Oh look. Sarcasm. It's awfully big, and so is Lie. You hang your head in shame, because why is your name so darn big in the middle of the page? Looking at the Huge Worlde of History, it's easy to see that God is the main character, God is the beginning and end of the story, and everything on earth revolves around the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ-not you.

Your life is like the part of an extra in Lord of the Rings (or another movie of a similar, colossal size). And yet, you (I) are foolish enough to structure your life, your wordle (and world) around self. How about Amy Carmiachael? India was probably big. And orphans. And prayer. And servant. Did you know that she refused to allow pictures of her in the books that she wrote, because she was so intent on shifting the focus from her to her Lord?

I know. We're not all Amy Carmichaels. But still, wouldn't it be the best moment in the world when God, staring at your wordle, looked up and said, smiling as He opened His arms wide to you, "Well done, my good and faithful servant!"? But when it comes down to it, the truth is that it doesn't matter what our wordle has on it.

For man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.