Proclaimer Blog
A word is worth a thousand pictures
I've been wondering about the power of a film/movie. Carolyn and I went with our daughter to see "The Iron Lady" just after it came out (you can't say we're not on the cutting edge of culture…). It is a very very moving experience, expertly directed and acted with great skill. We came out feeling we had been deeply touched and moved by it. But somehow the feeling didn't last long. I've noticed this with other films (and, to a lesser extent, TV programmes, because the screen is so much smaller – at any rate, ours is). We come out of the cinema and back into the real world, and the impressions fade.
It got me to wondering about why God communicates to us by spoken words. Even when he gave a vivid audio-visual experience (at Sinai, at the Transfiguration, Christ's resurrected body for example), we only get it through the words that speak of it. Is it partly because words get inside our imaginations and our thoughts more deeply than visual images? Is there something here to encourage preachers in a so-called visual age? We may be doing something the world despises; but the potential impact on our hearers is life-changingly deep.