The Expression Of Life

A famous preacher tells of receiving a letter from a parishioner which began as follows: “I listened to your sermon on suffering last Sunday. I just wanted you to know that I didn’t know what suffering was until I heard you preach.” In a more serious vein, he tells of a letter he received from another parishioner, a mother, who wrote that until recently, she didn’t know what love was, despite the hundreds of sermons on love she had listened to over the years.

This mother had been reared in the highest echelons of society in a southern U.S. city. She was formally presented in society, was always very active in the Church, always on just the right committees and in the right places and everything was just right. And she really believed she was a Christian. “But,” she wrote, “there was one problem.” One of her children, it seems, had given her a lot of trouble. As this mother said, “The child learned…