One of the most poignant passages in the Bible is in the middle of the Canticle of Zechariah where he interrupts his prayer to God to speak tenderly to his newborn baby, John the Baptist. I find that passage a very personal commission and challenge and appropriate that it is included in Lauds (Morning Prayer) to send us out into the day:
As for you little child
you shall be called a prophet of God, the Most High.
You shall go ahead of the Lord
to prepare his ways before him,
To make known to his people their salvation
through forgiveness of all their sins,
the loving-kindess of the heart of our God
who visits us like the dawn from on high.
He will give light to those in darkness,
those who dwell in the shadow of death,
and guide us into the way of peace.
It encapsulates the essential and awesome responsibility that we have as Christians to not only proclaim the Gospel, but the manner in which we are to do so. I find this 'sensitivity' or 'character' of how we are to be and communicate the Gospel, inadvertently but accurately described by a non-Christian, Thoreaux, in Walden: The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
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