To hear the song of the angels

Good news… The gospel…. what God is planning for us and all his people? Or perhaps a vision of God and his purposes brought to us by other people… strangers.  May be we are better tellers than we are listeners?

The words we use might be direct, like an arrow. ‘They’ say that anyone can give a talk, or sermon, in 30 minutes (or maybe just a little bit more), but to give one in five minutes is a very different story. To be brief is one thing; to be concise, leaving nothing important out, is another.

A spirit filled American Baptist pastor used to say that preparing a sermon took six weeks… a bit like cooking a stew in a slow cooker. What recipe will you use? Will it be straight from the cook-book,  a  marinade perhaps, or maybe  something new. Who invited the guests? Where do they come from? Whose party is it? And lastly, or is it firstly, how much time will you give to the silent internal conversation that is always present and absolutely essential. It surrounds both preacher and the preached to. Whether you think six weeks is a long time  or not will depend on how important it is to you. The preparation is not just for the preacher, or even the preached to, but for all who hear the word of God down the long ages of faith. Their fruits are not just words as St James made clear (James 2, 14 onwards)(to Martin Luther’s disgust).

Words can only be understood in a setting of silence.  Gregory the Great observed that those who play a harp frequently arrange the tune so that when one string is touched, another placed many chords away, is made to vibrate.   And on a simple matter of space, an excellent yellow  booklet on’ Report Writing’ (by Gordon Wainwright),tells us that we need grace words, like adjectives,  that give us space to understand what is written or said. They create a breathing space for the mind to expand, and at the right time of the year, to hear the song of angels.