Several years ago a pastor friend of mine made the comment, “I would sooner shovel concrete for ten hours than write a sermon.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t like preparing sermons – he did, and he was widely regarded as one of the premier preachers in the USA in his day. No, it wasn’t dislike of the task that led him to make the comment, but the intense toil it involved. The mental and spiritual demands of sermon preparation, he reckoned, far outweighed the effort involved in wielding a shovel all day.
Recently I came across a statement of Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper that addresses this issue. Kuyper, a man of immense mental energy and activity, argued that the work of thinking and writing is not less demanding than that of physical activity but more so. He writes,
“Compare the student, the scholar, the inventor thinking out his new invention, the architect forming his plans, the general studying his opportunities, the sailor nimbly climbing the mast of his ship, or yonder blacksmith raising the sledge to strike a glowing iron upon the anvil with concentrated muscular force. Judging superficially, one would say that the blacksmith and sailor work, but the men of learning are idle. Yet he that looks beneath the surface knows better than this. For if those men perform no apparent manual labour, they work with brain, nerve, and blood; yet since those organs are more delicate than hand or foot, their invisible, indwelling work is much more exhausting. With all their labour the blacksmith and sailor are pictures of health, while the men of mental force, apparently idle among their folios, are pale from exhaustion, the vitality being almost consumed by their intense application.” The Work of the Holy Spirit, p. 13
Anyone who has devoted themselves to hours studying the book or writing a serious paper will know exactly what he means.
