This doesn’t happen often but this morning I spent quite a long time staring at a blank computer screen. No, my Mac didn’t freeze.

It was more that my mind was blank and so I had a nice white page on my screen that didn’t have any words written on it.

If white’s your colour, it was a beautiful sight!

The Beatles have a white album titled, “The BEATLES”, recorded in 1968. And yes, it was completely white with the title embossed on the cover. That album has been dubbed “The White Album” ever since.

But despite all the “white” there was music on the vinyl inside, and that vinyl was all black.

All white isn’t that great when you’re trying to write something like a sermon or a blog.  They call an all-white page “writer’s block”, when you just don’t have anything to put down on the page.

But it’s not that I didn’t have any thoughts at all. While my page was white this morning, I had lots of ideas come to mind; just none of the thoughts I had were worth recording, or I didn’t feel like recording them.

My mind jumped from one topic to another. I would think of something to write about, but then,  for one reason or another, the idea would die in seconds.

I decided to change my scenery and do something else to maybe knock the “block” out of my system – you know, do something radical, like hold your breath when you have the hiccups, or sip a drink of water upside down.

The idea is to reboot your system back to normal.

So I left my white page, and went upstairs to have breakfast. I thought that filling my mouth with food and having a conversation with my wife would somehow spark words in my head that I could then type out onto the white page on my computer.

Sometimes that helps. … The other day I was having trouble with one of the apps on my phone. For some reason it was staying on and burning up my battery at a crazy rate. I powered down my phone, and when I turned it back on, whatever had been stuck on, got unstuck and my phone was working fine again.

Unfortunately, that didn’t help much with my white page. I came back to it and, not only was the page still white, but I still hadn’t come up with anything worthy of adding some black marks to it.

It sure is frustrating when that happens.

I had other things that I wanted to get to, other things I needed to be doing.

I almost left that white page white. And then I thought maybe I should write about having a difficult time putting black characters on a white page.

It didn’t take long until the black marks started to create an amazing contrast on the white page. My white page became a mere backdrop to highlight all the black letters that are now prominent, front and centre.

Here’s the thing: Sometimes you read the Bible and nothing seems to hit home. You feel like giving up on reading it. I believe Henry Blackaby once wrote that when he spends time with God he keeps reading the Bible until God brings something to his attention. Don’t stop reading God’s word because, if you persevere, God will cause those little black characters to stand out and apply to you, right then and there.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you do when you are blocked in some way? Leave your comment below.