The Difference Between Conviction and Certainty

Perhaps speaking prophetically today requires both the courage to say what we believe needs saying and the humility to keep listening afterwards.

An Old Woman Reading, after David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690). A simple image of attentiveness and reflection, reminding us that wisdom often begins with listening before we speak.

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There was an elderly lady in one of my congregations who hardly ever spoke.

She was one of those people who could easily go unnoticed. She did not have a particularly strong church background, and I never really knew very much about her life before she arrived among us. She simply began coming to church and, before long, became one of those wonderfully faithful people who appeared week after week without drawing much attention to themselves.

She also came to our Bible study groups.

Every week, she would sit with everyone else, Bible open in front of her, and listen. Other people would discuss the passage, offer interpretations, tell stories and occasionally disappear down one of those theological rabbit holes from which Bible study groups do not always return.

She rarely joined in.

Then, every so often, she would look up and say something.

It was usually only a sentence or two, but quite often it changed the entire conversation. She would notice something in the passage that the rest of us had overlooked, or suggest another way of seeing something we had already confidently decided we understood.

Then, having said it, she would put her head back down and carry on listening.

I paid attention whenever she spoke.

Not because she was always right. I am sure she wasn’t, after all, none of us is. What made her contributions so valuable was that they seemed to come from somewhere different. While the rest of us had been busy preparing what we wanted to say next, she had apparently been listening.

I sometimes wonder whether that has something to teach us about what it means to speak prophetically.