time – sethlewis.ie

Why I Will Never Use AI For Writing

You will never read an AI generated word on this blog or in anything I write. Not in a sermon. Not in a book. Not even in an email. I claim each and every word and sentence, every comma and dash—I am fond of dashes—and every careless error as entirely my own. I know AI is becoming a popular tool for writers. I know AI can do in a heartbeat what can sometimes take me hours of work (although I comfort myself that at least I have a heart to beat in those hours). I’ll take the time. There are more important things than efficiency, and the brain is a muscle. The labour of collecting thoughts, choosing words, and cementing them into sentences keeps my mind strong, engaged, and growing. I dare not relinquish it. I know that AI is good, and getting better every day, at mimicking human logic, emotion, and eloquence. I understand fully that it is progressing far more quickly than I am. It could easily outpace me, and in some ways I’m sure it already has, at being interesting, informed, persuasive, and inspiring—but it can never outpace me at being me.

Songs Of Trust

This week I’d like to share a few songs with you that I’ve been enjoying recently. These songs are diverse in musical style (I know musical tastes are different, so I won’t be offended if you don’t prefer them) yet all of them share the theme of trusting God. Trust is not always easy, especially when God’s ways and times are different than what we want or expect. These songs have encouraged me as I’ve waited for the Lord. Maybe they could encourage you, too.

Three Castle Head

On a sunny day in the Spring, we pulled the car into a gravel parking area at the end of a remote peninsula in Ireland. The sea shimmered in the light beyond the deep green fields lined and dotted with grey rock walls and white sheep. We opened the gate and crossed a field, and then another, and another, carefully following the faint paths worn by the feet of those who had come here before us. Sometimes we had to make a choice—it seems not all of our predecessors had gone the same way. Or did hooves make one trail, and feet another? Eventually the grassy fields gave way to rocky hills, and we scrambled up one side and down the other where the grass and mud and boulders and the sound of the sea all blend together into a kind of otherworldly magic and I had to remind myself that I wasn’t looking at an illustration of the Wild Lands of Narnia—I was in the real, tangible, wild of the actual world.

The Indispensable Inefficiency of Prayer

The to-do list is long—it’s always long—and the day only has so many hours. If we want to maximise our time on this planet, we have to prioritise. We can’t do everything, and it’s important to “make the most of every opportunity”, as the apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:16. But what does this mean? How does it look?

For a Christian, one of the most effective uses of our time is an activity that looks to most people—and maybe quite often to ourselves—like one of the most inefficient. And yet, if we really believe what we say we believe, and if we really trust our Saviour to guide us, then it is indispensable:

Prayer.

I’m Dated (and you are, too)

New Year’s Day, 2025. The day we all start having to pause to remember what year to write on forms and checks and such, or when we start writing it wrong and having to scribble it out and start again. What will this New Year bring? No one really knows. Looking back is easier—we know what the past is. For good or bad, it’s done. Before long, this past year that was so current, so vital and cutting-edge yesterday will start to feel stale and dated. Old. Has been. Whether we look back on it as the good old days or some kind of personal dark age doesn’t change the fact that we will look back on it. There was a New Year’s Day last year, too. Do you remember it? Or ten years ago, or twenty? Last Halloween I saw that they were selling ’90’s costumes, as if the ’90’s weren’t just last week. But they did look a bit funny.

One Day Leads To Another

I have learned over the years to temper my expectations about what can actually be accomplished in a single day. I’m not proud of this—I would be far happier if I could tell you that after consistently exceeding my own expectations of productivity I’ve had to adjust them in the other direction. The days are quick, though, and before I know it the morning is almost over and then after lunch the hours fly and it’s evening and I should really get to bed or I’ll be cross in the morning with my sleep-stealing self. I would love to do great things and see great progress today, but it’s hard to fit all those big, shiny things into one little square on the calendar.

Pause (a poem)

Another day, another week, another year. Sometimes it can feel like time blurs together, like life is stuck on repeat and everything keeps happening all over again and the only difference is that I’m more tired this time around but I have to keep going anyway because otherwise things will get ahead of me. This is one of the reasons it’s so important for me to stop everything, every morning, long enough to reconnect with God and remember what life is, where it comes from, and why it matters so much. That’s what this poem is about.

Time-Travel With Care

Time-travelling is one of the standard plot devices of our stories and films, from H.G. Well’s The Time Machine to Interstellar, Dr. Who, The Terminator, and hundreds more. It’s not hard to see the appeal—it’s interesting to imagine what it would be like to visit the world of the future or the past. It’s exciting to think of dipping into a different era, something totally unlike our normal everyday lives here and now. But it’s also easy to see the risks that this kind of time-travelling would bring with it. In the Back To The Future films, Doc Brown gives several stern warnings to Marty about the dangers and potential consequences of interfering with the past. He knows that time-travellers must be aware that even the smallest of actions can change the course of history in surprising ways—as we see in the films.

Generous Patience

“She’s so generous,” he said.

If he said it to you, what would your first thought be about the person he described? Would it have anything to do with how she uses her money? Probably it would. Money is the context we almost always use the word “generous” for. And that’s not bad—we need far more financial generosity in the world. But let’s not forget that the word (and the reality it stands for) applies to far more than our finances.

The Same Old Faces

My wife and I are planning to make some improvements to our garden this year, and one of the things we’d like to do is plant a new miniature apple tree. We like planting trees. It’s fun to anticipate what a newly planted tree will become in the years ahead. But there’s the rub: “years ahead.” Because if you want to eat the fruit from a tree, you need to give it time. A lot of time. You need to let it grow, put down roots, and become part of the ordinary, everyday scenery. It’s only after you look out of the window for years at the same old tree that you start to be able to reap the full harvest of fruit and shade and beauty and all that a tree can be in its maturity. By that time, the tree is nothing like new. The initial excitement of planting eventually gives way to a more settled appreciation and enjoyment of the tree as a part of everyday life.