In the beginning was The Word.

Recently I heard a radio commentator reflecting on the growing use of electronically typed and transmitted words and the adverse effect this was having on the practice of hand-writing.  His resolve was to write by hand more often.  So much modern communication is electronic that hand-writing has given way to typing and dictation.  The electronic word flashes round the globe in an instant before disappearing into who-knows-where?

Words, in all their many shapes and sizes, are part of our life.  Within a year of our birth, most of us have begun speaking.  As we grow we learn to read, write and (these days) type; to interpret and use words, express words, record words.  Our lives are so intimately bound up with words that the inability to understand and share them can place us at a severe disadvantage.  Words are powerful.

Tablets of stone, pencil and paper, on-line; for millennia words have been written and shared.   Long before the written word, oral traditions preserved truths and wisdom.  From great epic poems to hunting techniques or how to heal disease; words passed across the land and down the ages by mouth.

Spoken, written, typed; words existed long before writing was developed and often persist long after their authors have faded from view.  Words develop a life of their own: once uttered they fly free, beyond the control of the speaker, as many find to their cost.  We all use words, create words, play host to words.  Words come cheap, so cheap we seldom stop to think of where they came from or are going to.  Perhaps we should.

In the beginning was The Word (through whom all things (including you and I) came into being). This word was not a pencil mark, nor chiseled pattern on a stone tablet, nor an Instagram message.  The Word was God.  However you store or share words (typed, hand-written, spoken) does your care for the words you read, write, share and store honour this simple truth; that The Word, the creator of all words, was (and ever will be) God?

Rev’d Philip Payne          Lent 1                         (Italic quotes from John 1: 1)  The Notice Sheet for 18th February can be found here

Morning Worship at St Mary’s at 9.30am on Sunday 18th February