Deleting the Universe
Planets and spaceship walkways flit through my mind’s eye— memories, chapters, scenarios, the songs that fueled their inspiration.
The starry landscape of three novels— lovingly crafted, painstakingly edited, formatted, posted with joy…the scenes that fed my maladaptive daydreaming for fifteen years.
These are the pages that stole hours and days and weeks from my life, that siphoned worship from the Lord and fed it to a god who could never be worthy of reverence.
Yet, these are my most formative writing experiences…the chapters that garnered hundreds of comments, meaningful community, harnessed my creativity and honed my skill.
They are my proudest writing accomplishment…and the thing I am most ashamed of.
These galaxies spin before my eyes as I think about the online files— still there. Still in existence. Preserved in their proverbial universe, as if in cryosleep, until…
What? Until when? With the hope that these light years of empty black, punctuated by color and addiction and intermingled with nebula of good elements, might be useful again one day? Might not be the pitfall they’ve always been?
No…this time, it’s been nine months since I stumbled. And instead of giving life, I choose to cut it off where it’s been falsely manufactured. To pull the plug. To delete the solar systems that serve no purpose. To click the red link that erases them from anywhere they can be accessed again.
Moses melted the calf, ground it to dust, and made the people drink it. It was utterly destroyed and done away with. So why should I rebelliously horde my crimson galaxies in a virtual closet? I’ve already drunk the earthly consequences of my addiction, and Christ has died for the ultimate consequences of my idol worship…
There is no further reason for these stars to burn. There is no reason to return. There is no reason not to erase this universe.
One last time, I thank the Lord for whatever good came of this creation, and repent for the sins that transpired in its breadth, the hours I grasped for my own entertainment and fictional affirmation— hours that were always due Him.
There is nothing worthy of replacing You. There is no reason to look back at Gomorrah. There is nothing more to be gained in that galaxy.
So I bid it goodbye, clinging to the hand of Jesus as my sustenance, and I click the delete button on fifteen years of carefully-crafted prose.
And there is darkness, emptiness. Quiet.
And the Spirit of God hovers over the waters of my imagination…
