Is the message of the gospel a word thing or a done thing?
We have so many words that have crossed our lips and our paper about the reality of Christ in the world, but how effective are they in changing the trajectory of the culture that we live in.
One godly life lived for the glory of God is of more emphasis to the world of love and peace than so many many words of empty epitaphs.
The older I get, the more I see words as an impotent vehicle to project expression and emotion and reality. I, perhaps, am the impotent one. I feel so deeply miniscule, when I look at a man like Burt Bacharach who used words as a kind of whip to make people love him and one another. He, I would say was the captain of the sexual revolution of the 70’s. Words and great use of them can make you a captain, when you didn’t realize you would be. I am just learning that Carol Bayer Sager, was Bacharach’s partner in leading us all to love.
Oh, that was their calling and that age has long gone away. Partly, because words are flooding the world over the internet. Useful words and useless words are flooding and pouring over. A picture, worth a thousand words and a bazillion words of inane nonsense can become a slough of despond that you cannot traverse.
The problem is that there are no sign posts to say Quick sand and sloven language will take you where you shouldn’t go. You must use your own discernment. Sometimes you swim and the undercurrent takes you down.
I have taken to silence. I have taken to attempting to limit my speech and writing to when I feel there is a real useful need.
The gospel is a doing thing and not just a verbose expression. I must be careful of taking one single word and making a raft to try to make it for myself. No man is an island?
NO raft for my transport through this life! That is a fact. We must, through the tribulation of learning to traverse the tidal ebbs and flows of our day, grow up in all things.
At first, the waves give you shudders in your stomach. You feel as if you will be swallowed up and never learn to surf them to your own travel. Then after practice and repetition the waves become like a dear and huge friend that you would pet to get from one place to another.
I think that I feel like this about the internet. Pulling out my paddle and raft and trying to get a hold of how to learn from it and how to utilize it may come to me one day. For now, I am trying to be careful.
The next revolution should be the revolution toward godliness. The Lack thereof should propel us in that direction. As we eat of the fruitful words left behind in our ravenous intellects, may God make it so that our eating of the refuse of past generations of Godliness that we would learn how to eat and live for our own spiritual and cultural profit!
