Words Do Things

Words Do Things

One poet tells how a certain man who had performed a heroic act found it impossible to tell his friends about it for a lack of words to describe it.

But there was a witness to the event whom the poet refers to as having been "afflicted with the necessary magic of words."

He told the story, and he told it in terms that were so vivid and so moving that the poet writes: "...the words became alive and walked up and down in the hearts of his hearers."

John tells us, "In the beginning was the Word..."

When John Knox preached in the days of the Reformation in Scotland, it was said that the voice of that one man put more courage into the hearts of his hearers than 10,000 trumpets in their ears.

Words do things to people.

It's been said that in the days of the Second World War, when Britain was short on allies and weapons, that the words of the Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, as he broadcast to the nation, did things.

(From Kenneth Sauer's Sermon "The Incarnation is Not an Instant Breakfast Drink")