Stand on the edge of your cliff and laugh!
Early on in my blogging hobby I wrote a fun post about jumping off of a cliff. I never actually found a cliff and jumped off of it physically, but there was a great shift in my attitude from that time on. I have since touched down on another landing and have found the edge here.
You see I have been writing and typing random stuff like this for over seven years, and there is one thing I have really truly learned from all of this writing; speaking is harder. Before coming out to Massachusetts I shared with the other Jubilee Fellows that my biggest fear in ministry was the microphone. No, I don't have a problem talking to people. I have an issue with the intimacy of spoken word. When I write I can go back and delete it before I post it. The spoken word is like a grenade and leaves an impact whether or not I intended to lob it in that pew (pardon the bad image created there). In other words I don't get a backspace key. What's said is said and there is no going back just like there is no returning to yesterday or jumping to tomorrow. Spoken word stands on the edge of the now time. Of all the things we can do with our present time a spoken word is the simplest way to change the entire mood for a period of our future time. We often read the quotes of famous people in history, but how many more words do you think they spoke in their life time? How many words do you wish you had back? How many words do you wish you had actually spoken? The microphone terrifies me, but don't worry about me. I am laughing at the edge.
I have begun to practice. I read things out loud when I think no one is listening, and I have found my favorite text to read out loud. The Holy Bible. Seriously! I figured if I can attempt at reading it in Greek I should be doing it in my native tongue. There is power in those words. These words bring you to the edge and flow from the heart which Christ indwells. Then comes up the throat and onto the rebellious tongue which is brought to serve the Lord by the Lord. The text lives in the mouths of proclaiming believers and is brought to action by the works God brings us to. Brought to the edge I laugh, because my words fail, but His do not.
I fear the microphone because for too long I have thought the words I had were insufficient. I laugh because the words are not my own. The words are His and by his voice all things were made. I laugh and prepare for another jump.
May you laugh at the edge!
Vince, have you had Rebecca DeYoung as a prof? She has a great book called "Glittering Vices." In the introduction (I think) she tells this story of being in grad school and never wanting to speak up for fear of being wrong, or being ridiculed, or whatever else. But one day, she was reading through Aquinas, and she came across the vice called "pusillanimity." If you look it up on dictionary.com it says cowardly or timidity, but your classics skills should tell you that this technically means "smallness of soul/spirit." Aquinas identifies this vice as the opposite of pride, but just as dangerous! (Virtues are the happy mediums). Pride is where you are so full of yourself you don't allow God to speak, and pusillanimity is that you are so worried about your own worth in speaking that you don't allow God to speak either! DeYoung talks about this discovery as very liberating. Just by having the name of this vice and being able to recognize it, she was able to work against it and defeat it! I'm glad that you are aware that your words are not your own; that it is an act of faith to allow the Holy Spirit to speak through you.
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