We don't need golden words...

What we need is some seeds -- words of life

The preacher was meeting the congregation after the service was over, and people started greeting. "Lovely thoughts you shared," said a brother, when another approached "Very good message brother." After a while, a lady approached to compliment him yet again, "Golden words you have spoken." Gosh! Those are few delightful moments for the preacher.

That reminds me of many experiences, where I've seen and heard individuals comment about the preachers message, scrutinizing it and passing judgments. We start of with, "the way I see it..." or "the way I interpret it...", and there you have some varied opinions. Whatever happened to the 'one accord', in which the early disciples used to be in!

I hope most of us have read and understood what the Sadducees and Pharisees used to do. That's what we've exactly become now. It's no surprise though, that we have 600+ (figure might not be exact) denominations only among protestants, and so, we have varied doctrines and philosophies, formation of cults, which only multiply every day. And then, there are counter-teachings about the new-age doctrines.

I am reminded of Luke chapter 8, where Jesus compared the word of God to a seed. While the gap in comparison and Jesus' comparison with respect to 'golden words', and 'seed' is quite visible, what's to be pondered over is - 'Why do we preach'? To impress people or to get complimented? To get more viewers, more donations? Well, I agree that our motives might be mostly right in line with the word of God, but are we packaging it too much with stories, experiences, humour that we're robbing off God's word its spirit and essence?

To adapt the sowers parable in today's scenario, people come, listen, criticize / appreciate, forget... (there's a flip side to this, which is a whole big issue in itself). Whatever the case, maybe be it's time to introspect if we're trying to frame golden words for people to accept, or we're actually sowing some seeds...

We don't need any golden words, we need word-seeds that can sprout and bear some fruit.