Taking A Drink

For generations, The Reader’s Digest has gleaned articles from different magazines, condensed and summarized the content, and delivered their publication to households all across the nation. The company will take an entire book and edit it down to a 'Reader's Digest version." Founded in 1922, the product addressed an unmet need in the culture of the day. A new generation was waking up from the War to End All Wars. A new day of information and prosperity was at hand. The masses were hungry, wanting to fill their lives with all the good things this New America had to offer. But too much is too much, and when offered the opportunity to get a reading collection that brought a sampling of the writings of the day and to get it delivered to the door every month, well, the response was overwhelming. In just a few years, the magazine had almost 290,000 subscribers with a gross income of $900,000!

Now, fast forward into the next century. The amount of information available to an everyday consumer has grown exponentially. Newspapers, magazines, television, websites, podcasts, and even the dreaded ‘blog sites’ are flooding our lives with a torrent of data that is overwhelming at best. Like trying to take a sip of water from a fire hydrant, we can easily find ourselves dying of thirst in this land of plenty.

So we look for the summary. We scan the headlines. We listen for the sound bite. We know a little about a lot of things. But there are very few things about which we know a lot.

I’ve seen it in my own life. A big part of my day is spent in preparation of dispensing yet another morsel to a population who already feels quite sated in their quest for knowledge and understanding. And that perception sits with me, whispering in my ear, telling me to speak to the audience I have, to simplify the message that it might be attractive to ears dulled with information overload. Of course, the sermon should be couched in familiar terms and delivered in an effective style. But shouldn't the preacher's eventual aim on Sunday morning be a bit higher than the natural state of the congregation?

Case in point. There was a time years ago when inspiration would hit. You know, one of those moments when Truth becomes clear, when an idea or concept leaps to the front of all the rest of the blather of the mind, and suddenly, you know it’s good. Not just good, but goooood. And the response? How does one who prepares a sermon or two each week react when this nugget of wisdom shines forth? Why, with the exclamation, "That’ll Preach!" And in the days that would follow, the sermon would just about write itself. It didn’t happen often, mind you. But every once in a while the heavens would open and my thought process would move past the mundane to the inspired. Good moments indeed!

Oh, today the bit of insight still comes. The same moment of clarity still happens. But now, when inspiration hits, rather than considering the message yet to be birthed, too often I catch myself thinking something else. Rather than expressing a grand expectation with "That’ll Preach," it’s all too tempting to be satisfied with the sound bite and say "That’ll Tweet!" Yeah. What once was a message of hope and comfort, of challenge and education would now become a few lines on the screen of an iPhone. Some grand, complex insight into the working of our Creator in the ways of man would now be relegated to 140 characters. I hang my head in sorrow when I consider how easy it is for me to fall into such a temptation.

For contrast, let’s look at another era in history. We’ll go back before the age of computers and back to when the dispensing of information through media was still in its infancy. Let’s head to the time before any of the World Wars, even back before the Civil War. The year is 1858. Two men from Illinois, Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln are in a political contest, vying for a seat in the United States Senate. To educate people so they could make an informed vote, they have set off on a whistle stop series of debates throughout the state. Take note of the format of the encounters. To begin the debate, one candidate spoke for an hour. Sixty minutes! After that, the other candidate had an opportunity for rebuttal. He was given an hour and a half! Of course, the original speaker was given time for his own rebuttal of thirty minutes. 3 hours total! The culture was not interested in sound bites or snappy repartee. They wanted actual content that would encourage wisdom in their choice of representative. Today, just a century and a half later, such a format stands in sharp contrast to the debates we experience in our own political arena.

Our society tends to move along the path of least resistence, settling in to find the lowest common denominator. But don’t we deserve more? Don’t our children and the children yet to come deserve better? What might happen, what real change might occur if we choose to read the article and not just the headline? What might we gain if we read the book and not just watch the movie? How would our world be different if we insisted on becoming educated rather than being entertained? We might not be able to get a drink from the fire hydrant, but an ancient poet once talked of being led to quiet waters where souls can be restored. And if my observation counts for anything, it appears to me the collective soul of our culture is in desperate need refreshment, renewal, and even restoration.

Maybe it’s time for the congregation to listen to a sermon and not settle for a devotional. However, such a truism leads me to an inescapable conclusion. If someone’s going to be able to listen to a sermon, someone else must be willing to preach it. So, if I am going to preach the sermon, I must first fulfill my commitment to prepare the sermon. Conclusions can be rather pesky things, can't they?

Measure Twice,

DLB