He mounted the cherubim and flew;
    he soared on the wings of the wind.

• Psalm 18:10

Praise the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
    praise him in his mighty heavens.
Praise him for his acts of power;
    praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
    praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with timbrel and dancing,
    praise him with the strings and pipe,
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
    praise him with resounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.

• Psalm 150:1-6

SPOILER ALERT WARNING

If you intend to read this book, the following may give away the mystery

But not much of one this time.

“’It isn’t, really,’ replied Parker, seriously. ‘Dope-runners are murderers, fifty times over. They slay hundreds of people, soul and body, besides indirectly causing all sorts of crimes among the victims. Compared with that, slugging one inconsiderable pip-squeak over the head is almost meritorious.’
“’Really, Charles! for a man of your religious upbringing, your outlook is positively enlightened.’
“’Not so irreligious, either. “Fear not him that killeth, but him that hath power to cast into hell” [Luke 12:5]. How about it?’
“’How indeed? Hang the one and give the other a few weeks in jail- or, if of good social position, bind him over or put him on remand for six months under promise of good behaviour.’
“Parker made a wry mouth.
“’I know, old man, I know. But where would be the good of hanging the wretched victims or the smaller fry? There would always be others. We want the top people. Take even this man, Milligan, who’s a pest of the first water -with no excuse for it, because he isn’t an addict himself- but suppose we punish him here and now. They’d only start again, with a new distributor and a new house for him to run his show in, and what would anybody gain by that?’
“’Exactly,’ said Wimsey. ‘And how much better off will you be, even if you catch the man above Milligan? The same thing will apply.’
“Parker made a hopeless gesture.
“’I don’t know, Peter. It’s no good worrying about it. My job is to catch the heads of the gangs if I can, and, after that, as many as possible of the little people. I can’t overthrow cities and burn the population.’
“‘”Tis the Last Judgment’s fire must cure this place,” said Wimsey, ‘calcine its clods and set its prisoners free.’”

• Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

“The Maker of the men that make
will stoop between the cherubim.
The towel and the basin take
and serve the servants who serve him

• Dorothy L. Sayers, The Makers, a Dorothy L Sayers poem to honor skilled craftsmen

Boilerplate

In this mini-series, I will fulfill a promise.  Some time ago, published 14 January 2025, I wrote a brief synopsis of the book, Subversive by Crystal Downing.  The post is called A Subversive Christian.  In that book, I talked about the three books in the photo above.  And I especially wanted to do a mini-series on the book on the right, The Gospel in Dorothey L. Sayers.

Note that the title uses the preposition “in.”  Dorothy L. Sayers did not write a fifth gospel.  She did not write as if inspired directly by God.  The canon of Scripture is complete.

But in stating what this is not, then what is it?  All Christians have the Holy Spirit within them, guiding them.  When being a Christian is something you have inside you and through you, then your life will reflect that.  This book is how you can see various aspects of the Christian life in the works of Dorothy L. Sayers, mystery novels, plays, letters, and essays.

After the Introduction, it starts with Whose Body?  The editor’s attribute of a Christian that she focuses on is “Conscience.” Whose Body? is her first detective fiction novel featuring her main character, Lord Peter Wimsey.  Then in Death Must Advertise, we find Lord Peter has a couple of middle names.  His full name is Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey.

But we will stay in the Introduction for more than a week.  There are at least a half dozen quotes just in the introduction that look interesting.  I am not in a hurry to speed through this book.  I was not in a hurry to start it with me being over a year since I promised to make it into a mini-series.

But I would hope people could read my short stories and see the gospel being acted out in the characters in my fictional stories.  Deviled Yeggs grew up in a family of safe crackers, robbing from others.  He set out as a policeman, and then homicide detective, to redeem the family name but learning each person must have Christ redeem them individually.  Deviled’s wife, Trinity Naomi Tesla (TNT) Yeggs, was nicknamed “Nitroglycerin” (Glyce for short) by her parents because she was explosive when shaken.  But she found calm and peace in her husband’s arms, and eventually she found the same comfort and peace in the arms of Jesus as she faced “shaky” experiences.

Even when not writing about Jesus directly, the Good News (Gospel) appears in many ways in what a Christian writes.  Let’s enjoy this journey with possibly my favorite author (outside the Bible with C.S. Lewis in a tie with her), Dorothy L. Sayers.

Discussion

This novel had enthralled me.  I broke my rule about dramatization (television or movie) and novel.  If I read the novel, I do not watch the movie.  If I see the movie, I do not read the book.  But I was compelled to read everything I could find that was written by Dorothy L Sayers.  And in this case, I loved them both.  I watched the Ian Carmichael Wimsey.

Lord Peter is stranded in a small community in the Fenland on New Year’s Eve, Fenchurch St. Paul.  He has Bunter by his side, as usual.  He promises the rector that he will help with the ringing of the bells.  He promises that he knows what he is doing.  They were one man short due to influenza.

Lord Peter learns that a valuable emerald necklace was stolen in Fenchurch St. Paul.  Two men were convicted of the crime, and one had recently escaped prison.  The emeralds had never been recovered.  The emeralds had belonged to Sir Henry Thorpe.  That gets Lord Peter interested.

I learned a lot about bell ringing in reading the book.  They had to have the right number of bell-ringers.  The bell ringing that night was a change ringing.  Basically, in the bell tower, a well-orchestrated tune was playing.  In the room below, a carefully orchestrated dance was going on among the bell-ringers.  Lord Peter proved his worth.

The next day, Lady Thorpe, Sir Henry’s wife died.

As the year goes on, Lord Peter and Bunter visit the area a few times.  At Easter, Sir Henry Thorpe died and when they made way for his casket to rest next to his wife, they found an unidentified man atop her casket.  He had English garments on his dead body, but the undergarments were French made.

By the end of the year, Lord Peter follows messages here and there and he gets trapped in the bell tower briefly during a ringing.  And once, while attending church, Lord Peter reads Psalm 18:10 and suddenly his creativity dreams up the most implausible murder that you can imagine.  Or was it a murder at all?  In the process, he solves the crime.

Of course, the “tailors” were the other bell-ringers.

In the other Dorothy L Sayers quote, from the poem “The Makers,” Ms. Sayers goes on about the architect and the craftsmen and all their knowledge and skill, but then the verse that is quoted above.  It reminds us that no matter how wonderful our “creations” are, they are simply rearrangements of what God had created.

Not quoted is a lengthy essay, a portion of The Mind of the Maker, in which Ms. Sayers uses the terms Energy and Power as a spiritual level guiding force that helps the writer create.  Her insights are similar in some ways to my experience while writing.

She talks about how a writer is asked what is written first once you have the characters in mind and the general plot.

Her reply is that the question is in error in many cases.  Sometimes you have a great idea of the beginning of a story.  You have a group of people and something happens, but you have no “plot” beyond that until the Energy guides you to what would naturally happen with that particular group of people.  With a few unexpected milestones that are reached along the way, the story writes itself.

In using the word “Energy” she might upset a Physicist or Engineer, but she avoids upsetting anyone who would get upset when you say that God inspired you to open the door, turn left at the fork in the trail in the woods, etc.

Writers are not God-breathed like the authors of the Bible.  Those people were inspired by God to write what God wanted them to write.  Nothing creative at all.  The inspired Word of God.

But then an author that is writing an allegorical tale, a moral fable, or a novel based on Christian characters, there is that inspiration.  Creativity is given to some and not others.

Then again, I was commenting with Kathy at atimetoshare.me and I spoke about how some people go through life and they have countless stories to tell.  Others go through life and it was simply life.

For example, I was a platoon leader in the late seventies in Germany.  I could talk for hours about almost every man in my platoon.  But my wife and I became friends with a couple who were about ten years older.  This was about five years after I finished my time in the military.  The husband of this couple was a platoon leader in South Korea.  He served his time and three years later he returned home and was discharged from the military.  No stories.  No remembrance of the names of his men.  And I greatly admired this man as a strong Christian.

But then, he was the bursar of the university medical center, and I was an engineer who loved to write.  God gave me that creativity and he gave me that way of seeing life as a series of stories that sometimes interconnect.

I cannot conceive a life that does not develop into a story of some kind, but God made me that way.

Closing Prayer

Father, guide me.  I have stories to tell.  Lord, give me the strength and the mental clarity.  And help me glorify You with each thing that I write.  Thank You for the gift of seeing life in story form and the creativity to develop those stories into true remembrances and fictional yarns with a heavenly purpose.
In Thy Name I pray.
Amen

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.