Mark Buchanan

Introduction Confession: I've lived nearly 50 years and, for most of them, have never heeded the truth of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. For everything there is a season. For everything. In the natural world, that's obvious. The earth moves in a rhythm of seasons: cold, hot, work, play, light, dark, sow, reap, fruit, barrenness. Nothing could be more self-evident. But Ecclesiastes is talking about another kind of seasonality—life's seasons, life's inevitable tilting to and fro.

Tim Keller in his primer on preaching (simply called Preaching) says that the difference between a poor sermon and a good sermon is on us. All poor sermons are the preacher’s fault. But, he says, the difference between a good sermon and a great sermon is on the Holy Spirit. Only the Spirit can take our careful exegesis, skillful apologetic, poetic turns, heartfelt pleas, gentle humor, and make Christ real to the hearts and minds of our listeners.

“Good talking, Dad.” I waited each Sunday after I’d preached for my daughter, Nicola, then a teenager, to say those words. Sometimes she did, sometimes she didn’t. When she did, I felt heaven’s approval, or at least its nod. When she didn’t, I felt my preaching was slipshod, a mere sputtering and blathering. If my words couldn’t reach and touch my daughter, woe is me. And who else was I missing? I loved the little grammatical glitch in Nicola’s phrase, her slightly off-kilter syntax.