When Words Won’t Work October 7, 2013
The humancapacity for language is an incredible gift. Last month in Kazakhstan, I had so manyexperiences where I was reminded how wonderful it is to be able to communicateverbally—and how frustrating when you can’t!
Butsometimes I wonder if words get in the way of what our heart really wants toshare. Ever feel like that? You’re speechless, not for lack of something to saybut because words can’t quite capture it. I’ve seen that happen to people asthey try to describe their feelings about God or a struggle they’re dealingwith or the reason they made the decision they made. Our feelings often surpassour ability to communicate them.
Justthinking about it takes my mind in lots of different directions. (How ironicthat there’s so much to say about being speechless.) Here are some of thequestions that come to mind:
I wonder ifthis is what the Bible means when it talks about the groanings of our spirit orwhen it says things like “we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but theSpirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Rom 8:26).
I wonderif, when the words are working for us, we tend to hold back a little bitin our effort to communicate. I mean, those moments when words fail us, weusually get all animated and start using gestures and sounds (like me, lastmonth when “talking” to people who spoke Russian, not English). We puteverything we’ve got into our attempt to share our message. But when the wordsare there, we just kind of blurt out the first phrase that comes to mind,expecting the listeners to understand it just like we meant it.
I wonderif, when we are the listener and not the speaker, we content ourselves withhearing only the words and miss the meaning. Perhaps we’re too quick to assumethat if we hear their words, we’ve understood their heart.
And Iwonder if there’s a way to talk and a way to listen that makes those wordlessmoments workable anyway. I wonder if we can train ourselves to listen tosomeone’s heart so well that the words kind of fade into the background and weactually hear a person instead of just some words.
Nextweek: what we might learn from those moments when life leaves us speechless.