…or blessed by a clear focus?

The clip below is one of my all-time comedy favourites. I have been watching it again as I prepare to preach this Sunday. All to often, it seems, we feel that we simply don’t have the vocabulary to deal with the biggest issues and the hardest questions. Faced with a terminal illness, a debilitating condition, a shocking situation – our tongue cleaves to the roof of our mouths and we simply don’t know what to say. Like the woman in sketch below, we feel ‘it’s alright for you lot – I’ve only got a small vocabulary’. The thing is – many of the most profound truths in our faith are also the simplest. This Sunday, as part of our #biblefresh memory verses series, I shall be preaching on Isaiah 41 v.10:

Do not fear, for I am with you.

The promise is not of power, or triumph, or strength or special gifting…but of presence. Sometimes that is all it takes to restore a person’s perspective in the darkest of times. Maybe there are occasions when a small vocabulary is good enough?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scoEo5ycwOI&w=400&h=300]

Here’s a challenge: why not use the word “goodbye” at the end of every virtual or real encounter today? Though lost to us now, the words originally meant “God by ye” or “God be with you”. Isn’t that something you would wish for everyone you meet today?