I stand amazed

Ten days ago the managing editor of the magazine (Japan Harvest) I am Associate Editor for, asked me to head up a special edition. At that point we decided to postpone the almost-ready-for-printing Spring Edition. That meant that we were at a "standing start". Added to that is that I've only been on the team for one cycle of this magazine editing process - and that only as an associate, mostly just editing articles, but not doing bigger editorial decisions or dealing with the layout editor or anything.

Ten days ago a lot landed in my lap. Plus the knowledge that many of our usual writers were neck-deep in disaster response efforts. The desire to produce a magazine that told the story from the point of view that the secular media will miss - the Christian and church's side. But the lack of journalistic skills, the lack of an editorial team adequate to cope and the lack of time to write a whole magazine myself were large barriers that stood in my way.

I wrote that night here about asking God for wisdom and help. And last Saturday I had only four articles. Now, ten days since that standing start I have about 22 potential pieces, two additional editors, six people taking first-hand accounts and turning them into articles. I have two people with journalistic training doing interviews for articles. I have a graphic designer working on a cover and some inside graphics. Amazing! And the glory doesn't go to me, because there is no way that I could have organised that on my own.

More amazing is the prior planning that simply were God-incidents. Two of the first-hand accounts are from ladies I roomed with at the women's retreat only three weeks ago. Of the six people turning first-hand accounts into articles, four of them live outside of Japan and are or have been a part of the Editing Group I've been a part of for four years now. And I mustn't forget to mention the Magazine Editing Course I attended back in September 2009. I felt somewhat out of my depth there, but how the training and the handbook that went with the course have been useful this week!

I had a great meeting with the two people with journalism backgrounds on Thursday. It was only about 40 minutes, but was a great meeting, we felt like we'd gone from a few hopeful ideas to something that might just be a good magazine. The meeting was sandwiched by prayer - before and after when I prayed that this magazine edition would be to God's glory, not ours. I'm truly amazed at how it is coming together. Isn't it true - God loves to work through us when we are weak, because He gets the glory.