The book is titled "When God is Silent" by Barbara Brown Taylor. This book has three main points titled famine, silence, and restraint. On the first chapter she starts out by asking, "How shall I break the silence?"(pg.3). This first chapter focuses on "famine" which is the scarcity of food, but what she really means is the hunger that we have for God these days, how we try to find him and seems like we can't because God is silent. She states that according to a survey of people’s greatest fears, fear of public speaking rates much higher than fear of sickness or death (pg. 5). The person who is giving the sermon must listen as well as talk performing an act that is more complicated than solitary creation (pgs.5-6). Language can be porous and not solid even our best most carefully chosen words are not sturdy enough to bear the real truth. (pgs.6-7). She also states that nowadays language has taken a terrible hit, but what does she mean by that? First of all the assault of consumerism which forces words to make promises they cannot keep (pg. 9). Places and things such as on billboards, newspaper ads, television and the telephone. In her message she feels people have lost their connection and therefore the language cannot be trusted. She states that the moral is that there is no sense in getting attached to the news, or not the realities a reporter's words represent, just don't ask, and just let go (pg. 11). Another assault on the nobility of language is the sheer proliferation; the democratization of language has had effect of making good grammar sound fussy and the use of any word over three syllables a sure sign of the elite (pgs. 12-13). There is so much noise around us that we don't stop and be silent, and the saddest and unfor...
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...the go-betweens must be silent. Silence and speech define each other and like prayer and proclamation they are perfect for each other (pgs. 95-96). Our won authority to speak is rooted in our ability to remain silent; she states she expects to spend the rest of her life learning about the proper relationship between human speech and the silence of God. She also refers to the homiletical restraint in terms of economy, courtesy, and reverence in the language we use (pg. 99). The least the preacher can do is to reach for his or her own words, fresh from world in which ordinary people live, something that comes from the preachers own mind and heart, be authentic (pg. 108). God has hidden his face to increase our sense of loss until we are so hungry and lonely for God that we do something about it. Our words are too fragile and a Gods silence is too deep. (pgs. 120-121).
Then, hesitating a moment, he reached out and shut off the communicator. It was 18:13 and he would have nothing to report until 19:10. In the meantime, it somehow seemed indecent to permit others to hear what she might say in her last hour.” (Godwin)
Although the silence had no tangible effect in the beginning, it permeated the thoughts of the citizens as the length of the silences grew. When people realized the calming effects of the silence, reliance upon it grew, ultimately creating a political movement in which silence became effectively mandatory. The obsession with silence grew, until noise gained value through scarcity, turning the obsession towards itself. Intervals of noise replaced the intervals of silence, growing in length each time as well. Over time, noise became the major melody of time again, and the silence was all but forgotten in the din of life. Yet in the pattern and intervals of silence and noise, a cryptographer finds a message in morse code, “LISTENWELL” (Brockmeier
Repeated throughout the Gospel of Thomas is the saying “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” This line is repeated in sayings 8, 21, 24, 63, 65, and 96. The repetition of this issues a sense that only a select ...
By appealing to emotions, inspiring others to take action, addressing the needs and concerns of his audience, and including expressive and rhythmic language Edwards displays all of the elements of an oratory. Because of these techniques, Edwards’s emotional sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God remains to be his most famous work. It sparked curiosity in religion and contributed a great deal to the Great Awakening movement. Although the oratory is not as popular as it once was, traces of it can still be heard in courtrooms and churches. The oratory will always play an important role in America’s history and future.
However hypocrites may continue for a season in the duty of prayer, yet it is their manner, after a while, in a great measure, to leave it off. In speaking upon this doctrine, I shall show,
...es several rhetorical strategies in order to convey the idea that people often rush through life, causing it to be nearly meaningless to the individual. His use of allegory, repetition, and rhetorical questions appear most throughout the entire argument. His appeal through religion also strongly appeals to the audience. He states, “In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.” In this line, he is referring to God’s holy ways and the methods in which he is considered divine. This is directly contrasted with Americans’ tendency to speed through life. He is bringing all of his audiences together through this appeal and causes his audience to find a reason to follow through with this argument.
In sharing stories of faith and life experience, an author shapes both personal and public perception of what it is to live with Christian faith. To write is to give voice to thoughts from the mind’s inner tissue and the spirit’s impulse, to interlock energy and life into communication of ideas and conceptions. As a transformative thinking process, autobiography transcends physical limits. In reading Breathing Space, I became familiar with Neumark’s personal world, familiar with her feeling on relationships, her church, her sense of mission and her desires for God’s presence in her life. Though I had never met her before she flew to campus to speak about her book, I felt as though I knew her on sight. This suspension of physical limitations on the transmission of thought and feeling holds an incredible potential for communication of faith, though it is not necessarily reciprocal; she hadn’t a clue ...
Often in the sermons the ministers persuade their audience to behave in a spiritual or more fashion. Such is the case "Sinners in the hands of an angry god" by Jonathan Edwards. Where he persuades they sinners are going to hell if they do not give themselves to god. Edwards wanted to give a cautionary emotion to his audience by appealing to their fears, pity and vanity. Edwards had an encouraging impact on his audience because of his use admonishing tone, expectant imagery and vexed figurative language, had a authorities impact on his puritan audience.
In Maxine Hong Kingston’s autobiographical piece “Silence”, she describes her inability to speak English when she was in grade school. Kindergarten was the birthplace of her silence because she was a Chinese girl attending an American school. She was very embarrassed of her inability, and when moments came up where she had to speak, “self-disgust” filled her day because of that squeaky voice she possessed (422). Kingston notes that she never talked to anyone at school for her first year of silence, except for one or two other Chinese kids in her class. Maxine’s sister, who was even worse than she was, stayed almost completely silent for three years. Both went to the same school and were in the same second grade class because Maxine had flunked kindergarten.
Many historical events played significant roles in the makings of today's literature starting with getting important messages across to people. A way people would do this was to talk in the form of a sermon. For example, revivalist preacher, Jonathan Edwards, gave a sermon like no other in the year of 1741. "..his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate
In one of his recent sermons, Pastor Fleurimond explicated on the grace of God’s love towards repentant sinners to discourage them from their immoral lifestyle, which was not only emboldening, but heartfelt. He made the speech more empathetic instead of the customary informative approach most preachers use, thus creating a more personal connection with the congregation. The sermon was so sincere and whole hearted, many members of the congregation was moved to dedicate themselves to God and ...
The Bible student, laymen, or pastor will find the principles presented by Fee and Stuart helpful despite the weaknesses presented. The author’s contribution on how to interpret each of the different genres is especially beneficial. The Bible Student will have more knowledge of how to interpret God’s Word when finished with the work. Fee and Stuart achieve their goal helping the reader not only with interpretation, but with application.
Love Yourself as Hearers. Above all, the preachers should consider first the audience or “hearers” when preparing a sermon. As stated in this book, “we need to learn how to introduce, develop, and conclude our subjects in a way that interests hearers” (Galli and Larson, 1994, p. 16). In other words, we need to learn how to modify our words, sentences, paragraphs, stories and illustrations to deliver the message and impact the lives of our audience.
The image of the preacher that most resonates with me within our readings is that of Paul Scott Wilson. Wilson brings to light the image of the preacher as storyteller or moviemaker. “If we imagine that we are directing a film we allow ourselves to think and compose sermons in a visual manner- which is how most of us think in any case.” This resonates with me a lot because personally I am a huge fan of movies. I am a visual learner, and like many in my own generation who have grown up with television, the internet, and other forms of digital media, I have a limited attention span. For this reason, the preacher needs to assume the role of a storyteller who can paint word pictures within the sermon. These word pictures
Do you like to talk out your problems with a friend? Do you like to hear other people’s problems? Why do we always need to share our problems with someone? The truth is, humans are weak. We’ve always known that we can’t live by ourselves. So, it’s not a question that we need to share our burdens with someone else. We want someone to feel what we’re going through. And we’re hoping that that friend of ours has a way out of it, right? Whatever it takes, we want our problems to be solved. Unfortunately, it’s not every time can we find someone who wants to hear our problems L. Well, that’s the way humans are. We’re not perfect. But our Father in heaven is. He will faithfully listen to everything we’ve got on our minds. He is the only one who has the way, the truth, and the life. Of course, He knows how to solve our problems and He will help us with them. Now, doesn’t that sound good? Well, don’t you want to learn to hear God’s voice? The question is…how does He talk to us? Here are a few ways: