Proclaimer Blog
Preaching into the wind
It's been a long while – too long I hear you cry! – since Cycling Confucius had anything to say, so by popular request, he is back:
Cycling Confucius, he say
If you're cycling into the wind, don't give up, just drop a gear or two
This morning was hard. Cold. Wet. Windy. Head-windy. Couldn't get into 6th/7th (my normal cycling gear) and with a touch of la grippe du mec (man flu sounds better in French, more serious somehow), getting to the office was hard, hard work. Every turn of the pedal made something ache. Sometimes, it's just like that. Everything is harder. Slower. More draining. Not unlike ministry. Preaching, even. Sometimes, it seems the wind is behind us and the sun is shining. We get right into passages. We see the theme straight away. We know instinctively what the application is going to be. We don't get any distractions when we're trying to pray.
Other times we're definitely into the wind. We wrestle with the text like a dog with a bone. We lie away mulling it over. When we have worked it out, we can't for the life of us think about how we relate it to the hearts and minds of our hearers. There are times like this.
The answer is, don't give up, just drop a gear or two. Slow down. Pray. Take things one step at a time. Just get to the next stage. You'll get there. Experience tells you that you always do. Cycling Confucius, you see, he rarely wrong.