A Big Bang!

After extolling Annie Oakley (an American whose name is synonymous with good marksmanship) for her skill with a gun and suggesting that her portrait hang in every theological school in the land, Simeon Stylites says, in the November 17 issue of Christian Century: “Her portrait would surely be an inspiration to young preachers to learn to hit a mark. So many of them are rather tentative in that respect. Their verbal shots are high, wide and handsome. Handsome, certainly, but too high for their audience, and too wide of the mark, away off to the side of the interests of the hearers. It is a lot easier to hit the sky than to hit a rabbit. And many speakers of every sort are content to shoot at the sky. With some preachers every Sunday is Ascension Sunday as they soar up into the stratosphere. They remind one of the boy showing his father his air-rifle shots. ‘What are you shooting at, son?’ the father asked. ‘Oh, nothing,’ the boy replied, ‘but wasn’t it a big bang?’”