Author: Elijah Buchan

Writing is not just a passion or a hobby for me; it's my expression. I've been creating my stories since I was a child and am so humbled to see them featured on greenleafwriting.ca!

For As Long As I Can’t Remember

Where do I even begin with this one?

As a writer, this is one of my favourite stories. Not for the content or the writing style… but for the journey.

In about 2013 I set out to write a story inspired simply by the phrase: “for as long as I can’t remember.” I had never heard the phrase before, I had just thought of it one day and figured it’d make a fun amnesia story.

I randomly picked the year 1905 because I wanted to do an older story. I decided to have these two brothers, Harry and Mack (Mackenzie after my own middle name), travel across the US starting from the West Coast. I figured they’d end up in New York and eventually get stopped by the detective that was chasing them: Devante.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

And they did… I just couldn’t really figure out why or how but I knew they’d get stopped in New York. I wanted Harry to die and have Mack go to jail for murder. This would allow the narrator to write in his journal a frustrated memoir about how Harry will always be remembered as a criminal for as long as he couldn’t remember.

And then I started digging around in what happened in 1905 and discovered the tragic event that breathed life into this story. The very first elevated train derailment in recorded North American history. It happened on September 11th, 1905. This was obviously really intriguing due to the date. I kept digging and digging and found that 13 people died. But one of them couldn’t be identified. Harry?

For some reason, the motorman, Paul Kelly, decided to take a turn going three times the speed he should. We don’t know why. Perhaps because Devante paid him? And when the crash was through, Kelly ran off! Why? Perhaps because he had intentionally done this. They found Kelly two years later.

The tragic event filled all the gaps in my story. Did you know I had benched it for a long time because I couldn’t figure things out? This event made it all make sense. You’d almost guess I had known about the event before I began conceiving the story!

It took a long, long time to find all the names of those who perished in the crash. And I was thrilled when I did because I wanted to dedicate the story to them.

James Cooper: The Painter was originally James Conners: The Painter. I changed the name to Cooper after learning about a mid-forties man on the train who was beheaded. His name was James Cooper and he was a Painter. I’m not making this up! It seemed only right to rename my murder mystery character to James Cooper as the change was so subtle and meant a lot to me.

To read For As Long As I Can’t Remember, click HERE

Conflict of Interest

This was a hard story to name! I wanted to call it coffee, court, and conflict… thankfully my wife deterred me from doing that! I had come up with the entire plot and concept and written the first scene prior to figuring out the title. It turned out to be perfect! This story follows two people whose love is a conflict of interest and also we get to see the conflict that comes from interest (being interested in someone)! This is a super fun story and I really fell in love with our two leads: Tavery and Hannah.

To read Conflict of Interest, click HERE

Elkadesh

This story has taken a lot of re-writing and plot-changing to get just write. It’s about time travel, alternate realities and butterfly effects. I’ve been working on the sequence of scenes for many years in order to get them just write.

This story was inspired by the concept that Tolkien sort of put forth. When the Age of Man began, perhaps they could develop out of a world with dragons and glowing-fireball-eyes and into paved roads, airplanes, and Snapchat. Perhaps… but the only way to find out is to travel back in time and with the help of… nope. I can’t tell you what the stone really is just yet. But Flygue Sootna knows.

To read Elkadesh, click HERE

A Space Pirate’s Life For Me

My best friend, Ben Ward (who moonlights as Michael Draw) shared a story he was working on about a Sci-Fi pair of kids on a junkyard planet working as slave-orphans for a Madame Zolan. One of the kids’ parents were killed by space pirates and almost immediately after reading about that my mind began racing. I knew it’d be so much fun to write a story about space pirates!

And it was/is! The best part… Nax. This is hands down one of my favourite characters. He’s spicy, witty, adventurous, and cockroach-like annoying: the crew can’t get rid of him! He’s got a secret that disappoints even me, though! I guess that’s the downside to letting my imagination write stories instead of my own will.

I am debating stretching this story into another series of stories. I’d use this as a back story for a whole realm of space piracy! But I may just cut it short (after the second episode) and leave the rest up for imagination. We’ll see.

To read A Space Pirate’s Life For Me, click HERE

Amber

Amber originally started with the concept of a kid-napping story I wanted to write. A man was to kidnap a girl at a young age and as she grew up, she was to begin believing he was her family. Thus, when the true parents found the girl… the girl wanted to stay with her kidnapper! This story was way too dark for my liking so I benched it.

One Fall Thursday morning, I was driving to work when the radio show I was listening to began talking about the Canada-wide alert system we have in place where Amber Alerts are texted to everyone in the country. The kid-napping story came back to me. I realized I still didn’t have one so I thought about it on the way to work and Amber was formed in that 25-minute drive.

I love the idea of a Liam Neeson’s Taken style female character who would do anything to get her daughter back, so when Heather’s character turned out to be exactly that, I was really pleased!

To begin reading Amber, click HERE

Be Still And Know… What Exactly?

You’ve probably seen this phrase on a wall, social media page, or someone’s tattooed arm. “Be still and know,” has been a phrase that’s been used a lot to get people to calm themselves and not worry about the storm they are in. But if you’ve never actually read the verse, then you’re missing out! The phrase has so much more depth if you read it with some other scripture and read the last part of the phrase. 

 

“Be still and know that I am God!”

Psalm 46:10a NLT

 

Okay so maybe you have read that whole phrase. It sounds so familiar, right? But for the unbeliever: it means so much. And for the believer: it means so much. And this meaning is found in two great little stories in the bible. One about Moses and the other; Elijah.

We’ll start with Moses. He was a Hebrew man born and raised in Egypt. His people were slaves by that time (originally refugees centuries prior) and yet he himself was like a prince! He was adopted by the king of Egypt’s daughter and raised as an Egyptian. Events led him to flee Egypt and he found himself wedding Zipporah, having kids and living a regular (1500 BC) kind of lifestyle. But one day, recorded in Exodus chapter 3, when he was watching his father-in-law’s flock, he wandered way out into the wilderness and came upon Mount Sinai. And on that mountain he saw, intriguingly, a bush that was burning, yet not burning up. It simply was ablaze. Turns out God was there and He spoke with Moses and told him to go back to his people in Egypt and free them. Moses asked in which god’s name would he be appearing before his people. You see the Egyptian culture (Moses’ adopted culture) believed in a god for almost everything. So naturally when he met “the God of his ancestors,” (vs. 3:6) he wanted to know God’s name.

Do you know how God responded? “I am that I am,” (vs. 4) the text reads. And looking at the original wording, it can be translated as a few different things, two of which being “I will be what I will be” and “I am because I am.”

To Moses, an unbeliever, God’s proof for His existence is His existence. God so boldly states that He is, simply because He is! When I tell people I’m a father, I usually back it up with pictures of my sons to prove my statement. When I say I’m a husband I point to the ring on my finger or the way I interact with other women. When I say I’m an author I show them my website and invite them to read one of my works. We always follow up with proof for our claim. God’s proof to His claim… is the claim itself. This is the boldest and most daring thing God could say to Moses.

God could have shown Moses a vision of how He created the universe. God could have told Moses every decision he had ever made. But when Moses asked God for His name… when he asked who God was as a god… our Lord simply and boldly stated that He is.

If this response is still a little confusing, (don’t worry, because it certainly can be!) let’s jump into our next story; what God says to the believer, Elijah. 

Elijah is best known for his feat on Mount Carmel where he has a ‘whose god is best’ showdown against the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:20-40). The challenge is an epic one and well worth a read! Spoiler alert: Elijah and God kick butt! 

“Perhaps he is daydreaming, or is relieving himself,” Elijah asks (vs. 27 NLT ). And his Lord is showing up by sending down fire from the sky and burning up a water drenched alter! God is proven to be God. Elijah means: my God is Yahweh, I’ve also heard it described as Yahweh is God and that perfectly sums up his ministry: proving God is God. Elijah backs up the statement, “I am that I am,” through his God-proving battle.

But, the story I want to tell takes place right after that accomplishment. A woman of great power, named Jezebel, wishes to kill Elijah because he is a prophet of the Most High. So he calls fire down on her! No, not really… he runs! He flees! He gets out of dodge!

And it’s in his moment of despair, when he is hiding and seemingly low on faith, that God shows up. 

 

“9 And there he went into a cave, and spent the night in that place; and behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and He said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

10 So he said, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.”

11 Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.”

1 Kings 19:9-12, NKJV

Where was God? He was in the quiet. He was in the still. He came to Elijah in that still, small voice because that’s what Elijah needed. He had seen God’s fire. He had seen God’s power. But Elijah needed to know that God was his… oh, the word for this is hard to find but let’s list a few: friend, protector, tender guider, shepherd, love. If there is a word that could sum all that up, it’d probably be Yahweh.

Imagine you’re in that cave. Are you afraid? Are you low on faith? Are you in the middle of a storm that could never be calmed? Are you before a mountain that you could never climb?

 

“The LORD Himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.”

Exodus 14:14 NLT

 

Listen and hear God’s whisper.

Luke Langman’s song “Every Word You Say” has a gorgeous opening line: “You only whisper because You’re close.”

God is not One who requires a chaotic approach. He is not One who requires a clean and perfectly practiced approach: He offers an approach to Himself that is calm, still, and awe filled. And as a result, we are calmed, stilled, and awed. Even if we come to Him in a storm, He’ll calm our waves (Matthew 8:23-27). If we come to Him with a mountain before us, He’ll move it (Micah 1:4, Mark 11:23, Matthew 17:20).

These two men, the unbeliever and the believer, were approached by God in a way that demanded awe. Did you know, Moses had to remove his sandals because he was upon holy ground (Exodus 3:5)? Elijah saw God’s power manifest in nature and yet His voice, His presence was found in a still, quiet, humble, small voice.

And if I were Elijah in that cave, I would close my eyes and listen to His whisper. I’d hear the One who exists because He exists say:

“Be still and know that I am God.”

Friends, He is God. He is your God and He fights for you. He loves you. He is enough for you. Calm yourself. Be still and know this.

This would be a great time to take a moment and reflect on the passages we just read. Reflect on what God has done in your own life. Maybe read Psalm 77. Do you notice the second half of Asaph’s prayer? Sometimes God doesn’t need to do a new, big thing in our lives. Sometimes we’ve got to look back at what He’s already done and remember that He’s close to us, whispering and leading us by the still waters (Psalm 23:2). Take some time, right now if you can, to pray and thank God for what He’s done in your life, invite His Spirit to meet with you and then just sit there and be still. Let God do the rest.

On My Knees

Prayer. One of the few and necessary pieces to the puzzle of faith. Simply put, prayer is speaking with God. I’ll get to the crux of this article and just state that any relationship will suffer without communication. Two-way communication is necessary to maintain your faith: a relationship with the Almighty God. And if we hear that old man preach once a week and maybe we read a verse from the Holy Bible every now and again, but have not prayer, then our faith has either no communication or it’s a one-way street. And either of those is unhealthy and a recipe for distance from our ever-gracious Lord.

And now that I’ve stated all that I wish to present in this article, let’s break it all down and start at the beginning. And I mean, the beginning.

How prayer began; God made mankind and it’s clear in Genesis He was conversing with Adam and his wife, Eve. God tells Adam before Eve was made, to be fruitful and multiply, name the animals, tend the garden, but don’t eat from that one tree (Gen. 1:28-30, 2:16-17). Well, we know how the story goes and so when God confronts Adam and Eve after they’ve eaten from that tree, the humans are seen verbally conversing with God (Gen. 3:9-19).

And so prayer, although the very first subject matter seemed a bit intense, started off as fairly casual. As if they were talking with someone who was right there. And He was! The Bible tells us, God Himself walked in the garden (Gen. 3:8).

That’s pretty interesting, for more on that check out the article: Christ in the OT, once it hits the site (could be a few months from now), but I want to see where prayer went from there. We’ll briefly go through the historical figures who subsequently conversed with God after the fall of man and we’ll try to see if there is a change.

Next, we have Cain! Cain? Yes, Cain. The guy who killed his brother because God favoured what good ol’ Abel had to offer. God spoke to Cain and Cain spoke back (Gen. 4:9-15). Verbally and casually.  So clearly this casual speaking with God is not exclusive to life before sin (Adam and Eve in the garden).

And then we have the enigmatic Enoch. The man who was and then was not. He is said to have “walked with God” or in the NLT: “walking in close fellowship with God,” for three hundred years (Gen. 5:21-24). Interestingly, we never have recorded conversations between Enoch and God, in the Holy Bible. I presume him being such a close friend to God, warranting a pre-death rapture— one of two, the other being Elijah— he must have had two-way conversing in order to maintain such a fruitful friendship with the Father.

Noah would be the next prominent character but only God’s words spoken to Noah are recorded and no response from Noah himself is recorded (Genesis chapters 6-9).

And at last, the friend of God, Abraham. Two-way talking is recorded in a face-to-face manner and omnipotently on many occasions. God appears to Abraham physically and speaks to him and Sarah (Gen. 12:1-9, 13:14-17, and all throughout 15, 17 and 18). Abraham speaks back in Genesis 15, 17 and 18. God says He will protect and reward Abraham, who subsequently complains to God that he does not have children. God replies. It’s a conversation the two are having. Casual and natural. The entirety of chapter 18 is another marvel as God is physically there talking with Abraham and his wife Sarah.

As does Jacob when he wrestles with God (Gen. 32:22-30). Skip ahead a few centuries to the iconic conversing of Moses and God —through the bush that’s ablaze— (Ex. 3-4). And then we’ve got that gorgeous time of Elijah in the cave (1 Kings 19:9-18) hearing that still small voice (1 Kings 19:12 NKJV), for more in that story read the article: Be Still and Know… What Exactly?.

Even before Elijah, with Joseph, Samuel, David and many more as well as after Elijah with Nehemiah, Ezra, Daniel, and many, many more… All throughout the Bible, we have people speaking casually with the Lord of Hosts. The God of all.

So what divides us from those peoples of old? Why can’t we talk with God casually and naturally? Is it Christ? Did his coming and completing the requirement of the law and freeing us from slavery to sin make it so we can’t talk to God like He’s our buddy or our daddy? No! Look at Jesus! How fluidly did he speak of and to the Father?

Talking with, not just to, God is still a part of our faith and needs to be a part of our lives. This article is not about whether God still speaks audibly to us today as He did with those I’ve mentioned already. This article is about using the intimacy of prayer to strengthen your relationship with God.

So, what does this desire to be casual with God and speak with Him look like for you? Well, I’ll tell you what it looks like for my own walk with God.

I set out on a journey in 2017 to read through the whole Bible in the year (in chronological order— I recommend that sometime, it is fascinating!)

After that year, I found myself having missed something: prayer. I spent so much time immersing myself in scripture that I had forgotten to pray! Don’t get me wrong, I’d still prayed maybe once or twice a week but it definitely wasn’t what Paul instructs to do: “pray without ceasing,” (1 Thes. 5:17).

Thus, for 2018 I set out on another journey: a dedication to pray,, on my knees, every day. I wanted to show God through my posture that I revered him. This sort of attitude and actually the structure of my prayers for that year were inspired by Jeremiah 32:17-25.

At that time, the prophet Jeremiah was imprisoned for speaking God’s word to the king: a certain message the king didn’t like. To make matters worse, Jerusalem, where Jer was at the time, was under attack! Jer is in prison and God tells him to buy a field. Jeremiah goes through with it but then sends God this prayer:

17 “O Sovereign Lord! You made the heavens and earth by your strong hand and powerful arm. Nothing is too hard for you! 18 You show unfailing love to thousands, but you also bring the consequences of one generation’s sin upon the next. You are the great and powerful God, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.19 You have all wisdom and do great and mighty miracles. You see the conduct of all people, and you give them what they deserve. 20 You performed miraculous signs and wonders in the land of Egypt—things still remembered to this day! And you have continued to do great miracles in Israel and all around the world. You have made your name famous to this day.

21 “You brought Israel out of Egypt with mighty signs and wonders, with a strong hand and powerful arm, and with overwhelming terror. 22 You gave the people of Israel this land that you had promised their ancestors long before—a land flowing with milk and honey. 23 Our ancestors came and conquered it and lived in it, but they refused to obey you or follow your word. They have not done anything you commanded. That is why you have sent this terrible disaster upon them.

24 “See how the siege ramps have been built against the city walls! Through war, famine, and disease, the city will be handed over to the Babylonians, who will conquer it. Everything has happened just as you said. 25 And yet, O Sovereign Lord, you have told me to buy the field—paying good money for it before these witnesses—even though the city will soon be handed over to the Babylonians.”
Jeremiah 32:17-25, NLT

He spends 17-22 just praising God for what he has done. And then he yells out (paraphrasing) “we’re under attack! Yet… you’ve told me to buy a field!”

Isn’t that such a great prayer structure? I ran with it— or rather: knelt with it. Every morning I got on my knees and I spent the majority of my prayer praising God for who He was and what He has done. I told Him things that He knew like: “you are good, awesome and holy. Your name is higher than anything in my life. You are the one true God and your power is endless.” The amazing thing was, by praying these things to God, I found the words were ministering to me. He was speaking back by shaping me in a man who revered God. It felt like a conversation. It felt like the days of old.

And at last, at the end of my prayer, I would lift up my wife and son (now sons), my church and extended family, my coworkers and my own requests.

Praying this way felt better. Because I was on my knees, literally bowed down with my head pressed against the ground, I couldn’t help but praise God and make the prayer about Him and not me.

I tell you, brothers and sisters, it is a profound way to pray. I know not everyone is able to get on their knees and if you can’t: do so in your heart by starting to pray a ‘Jeremiah’s Prayer.’ Pray to God in a way where it is casual and pour out your love for Him. Tell Him how good He is. Sing to Him! Almost every morning I would pray through Bethel Music’s John Mark and Sarah McMillan’s “King Of My Heart“. I especially loved praying to God the chorus: “You are good, good, oh, oh. You are good, good, oh, oh.”
Through this kind of prayer and humbling of your own self and getting back to talking with God as if He is right there with us, you’ll find Him whispering back to your heart in extraordinary ways: breaking down walls, removing sin, fighting pride and so much more; if you let Him. I encourage you to take up prayer as if God were casually next to you, and then worship him with all your heart. Let Him be your best friend and your God.