Times Like These

Have you ever read something that grabs the moment, the moment when you wondered what you were accomplishing in life - the moment that addressed that question that had been haunting you - the moment that defined your purpose in life better than it had ever been defined before - any moment?! As I was re-reading a book I came across such an article. The article was addressing what often appears to be the repetitious, predictable pattern of preaching every week. Sometimes it feels like the preacher isn't making much of a difference with his/her weekly declarations of good news, but G.K.Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, says that just because we feel we're stuck in an endless cycle doesn't mean God isn't still actively creating, actively creating through our repetition. Chesterton goes on to illustrate how a child loves the predictable and unchanging; I've experienced that when I will read many times to a grandchild the same story .......... 'read it again,' they'll request, and so I read it again, and again, and again. And each time they eagerly listen as though they've never heard it, but should I miss or change a word right away they say, 'that's not right!' Chesterton proposes that that illustrates how God is actively creating, every morning he says to the sun, 'do it again,' and at night to the moon, 'do it again.' God takes perfect delight in 'doing it again,' 'he never gets tired of the repetition says Chesterton. 'God has the eternal appetite of infancy' adds Chesterton. Every time we praise God he cries, 'do it again,' every time that the preacher tells the story, God cries, 'tell it again.' Every time the congregation gathers around the communion table and shares God cries, 'do it again.' Such repetition does not entertain, it sustains; such repetition does not inform, it forms those who hear and share. I had never realized how caught up in the world's search for continually wanting something new I had become, my eyes closed to the freshness of the mundane, the value of 'do it again.' I needed that chapter from 'The End of Words' by Richard Lischer.