Because I’m a writer, occasionally a friend will say to me, “I want to write a book someday.”

“That’s a worthy goal,” I reply, “and I hope you do write a book. But it’s better to be one than to write one.”

I’m thinking of the apostle Paul’s words: “Clearly you are an epistle of Christ . . . written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart” (2 Cor. 3:3).