WORDS

Sunday, July 29, 2007

In a few minutes I will be heading on over to Miller and Shea where a bunch of us get together every Sunday. It’s a meeting of words—lots of words. Most of them come from the guy we call “the preacher” For about thirty to thirty-five minutes he opens his mouth and out come words.

I know a lot about words. I preached for almost fifty years. In talking to other preachers I have found that the most depressing aspect of pastoral work is preaching. Blame it on the words. An old preacher once said, “The possibilities for being misunderstood are infinite.”

Many times after preaching I would be met at the door by someone who would say, “That really was a great sermon about…” And I would think, “That’s not what my sermon was about you idiot! My sermon was about this.”

WORDS—so easily misunderstood. I have often thought, “I should never have gone out in public with that word.”

There will be thousands that come for our meeting today. I pray that each of us will give the preacher a fair hearing. Words are hard to work with.