When Jonah spoke to the people of Nineveh, his sermon cast the greatest city of the time into a season of deep repentance. Led by the King himself, there was wearing of sack cloth, mass confessions and calls for remorse. Surely, his sermon was great.
Not so. It was only eight words.
"Yet forty days,
and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" (Jonah 3:4b)
Jonah was not a great
man, nor did he have great words, he simply had the right thing going; He
served a great God. That's pretty much the story of the Bible. A great God,
using ordinary people for His extraordinary purposes. A great God who, in the
book of Jonah, saved a sinful people, listened to their cries and poured on
them mercy, and forgiveness in exchange for His righteous wrath.
It's no secret that I have
a word problem. Unlike Jonah, I've never been able to keep within word counts,
and I'm super wordy. SUPER wordy. They call my super wordy woman. My youth talks, essays, articles, and blog posts are
always too long. Eight words wouldn't even suffice for half my
opening sentence, let alone a first thought, or even an introduction {for
example, this sentence alone is now 25 words}. But, like with stirring pie
crust dough, less is almost always more. Wise people are very rarely wordy
people. Wise words are hardly ever long. Being succinct, and being focused, are
two things I need to work on, and learn to do much better.
So here's attempt one.
What God has been speaking to me tonight, in eight simple words.
For followers of Christ, life's a love adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment