Words, Words, Words

Words have the power to create and the power to

destroy, and God in His wisdom determined that His gospel was going to be communicated through words. Through words. Do you ever think about how odd that is?

It’s always kind of interesting to me how the Christian community eagerly awaits the release of every new Christian film that comes out. I think in particular of movies like The Passion of the Christ, where when that movie was coming out (and I’m not making a judgment call either way on the movie—I’m just looking at the reaction that people had as it was coming out), people were like, “Finally! Finally, people are going to go to this movie, and they’re going to see what happened, and they’re finally going to understand.” Right?

Except that when you say that, what you’re indicating is that for millennia—for a long, long time—God was sitting on His hands, eagerly awaiting for the video camera to be invented, so that finally His words would be in a comprehensible form and people would understand it.

Have you ever heard that expression, “The book is always better than the movie”? It’s never been more true. So I think some of us have a little bit of a self-confidence issue around believing that these words will do what God has said that they will do.

My words have power, yes….His Word . . . oh! It has a power that is undeniable and unfathomable, and we have only to be responsible enough to show up and open it in a sober-minded way.

There’s a quote by St. Augustine that I absolutely love, that I think captures the tension that the teacher lives in. He says this:

You are my God, my Life, my holy Delight, but is this enough to say of You? Can any man say enough when he speaks of You? Yet woe betide those who are silent about You. For even those who are most gifted with speech cannot find words to describe You.”