What's Going Without Saying Should Be Said

A phone message to my mother-in-law a few days ago highlighted something I’ve noticed in our culture.  The message included something along the lines of “I called to tell you how much I love you and appreciate you.  I wanted you to know how special you are to me.”   But the person never went on to quantify the “how much” or “how special.”

The same thing happens in church when someone says, “Praise the Lord” and then no one does.  Praise the Lord is a command not a praise.  A praise would be something along the lines of “God is holy” or “God is loving” or “God is merciful.”  Instead the congregation assumes that the phrase, “Praise the Lord” is all that needs to be said about God. 

The person who left the message may have gone on to enumerate Anina’s specialness or some of the ways the person loves Anina if they had been physically present, but I doubt it.  If we were more accurate, or more honest, we would put our arms around each other and say, “I want you to know how much I love you but I can’t think of a specific way to quantify that” or “I want you to know what a special person you are, but I’m incapable of actually articulating what it is that makes you special.”

On a recent visit to a church I pastored a person came up to me and told me they wanted me to know how much help I’d been in their spiritual development.  And the sentence ended there.  I was tempted to ask in what ways specifically I had helped but that would have sounded like I was asking for a more specific compliment.  Instead I smiled and assumed the best of this person and their motives and thanked God that whatever it was I had done had been of help.

Maybe we should all work on being more specific in our thanks, our praise and our expressions of love to God and to each other.  I, for one, would find it refreshing, affirming, specific and clear instead of generic and obfuscating.