SermonStudio

AFTER PETER PULPITPOUNDER developed the fine art of pulpit pounding, his congregation began to look at him more and more when he preached. But if it was nice to have them look at him, it was fascinating to see how they looked to him. For to Peter, as he stood in the pulpit, the faces of his people were like the falling snow - no two alike. Peter would hardly admit it, but sometimes he forgot what he was saying in his sermon as he thought about the cleverness of God in making so many and such interesting faces and features.

Now, if we children would have the chance to preach a sermon, we would stand in the pulpit and see for ourselves what Peter Pulpitpounder saw Sunday after Sunday. We would be surprised to find that our Reverend Mr. Pulpitpounder sees much more from his pulpit than ever we thought he did. How shocked we boys would be to learn how easily he can see us make airplanes of our Sunday bulletins, and how easily his sparkling eyes fall on girls drawing in their hymnals or whispering to playmates. How foolish we would feel to know that our pulpitpounder sees all the little things we do when we think he does not even see us at all!

But it was not only the children that amused Rev. Pulpitpounder when he took his pulpit outlook. Sometimes he thought, "How amusing of the Creator to give the baker a shiny head and the tailor a shiny nose."

And one time Peter almost smiled in his sermon, as he wondered why the Lord gave the head deacon more hair under his nose than above his ears. For the deacon wore a mustache which was so big that from the pulpit it looked as if he had more hair on the front of his head than on the back, and Peter Pulpitpounder wondered which side of his head the deacon combed most when he got up in the morning.

It was no wonder then that Peter forgot how he was going to begin his sermon one Sunday when he happened to notice the women and their glasses. Truly, every color in the spectrum was represented, and Peter doubted that God had shown more originality in His creation than the eyeglass makers had shown in fashioning their glasses - especially the frames.

Peter saw some glasses which reminded him of the tears of repentance, and he saw others that looked like the joy of salvation. One pair appeared like two black tires on display, while another could easily have passed for Joseph's coat of many colors.

But it was not so much how people looked as where they looked that sometimes disturbed the preacher. There were some who looked at the floor until Peter Pulpitpounder nearly shouted, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates!" And others there were who looked around so much that Peter sometimes wondered if people did not come from the goose instead of the monkey. Of course, in his better moments, Peter knew they did not come from either, because they came from the God Peter Pulpitpounder was preaching about.

Still others in Peter's little assembly looked up into the ceiling when he preached. Now most of them did this, not with their eyes open, but with their mouths open, for sometimes Peter just pounded the air as he preached and the drowsy heads of some nodded heavier and heavier, until they fell fast asleep. But the preacher never worried about his sleeping saints, for he knew he could always arouse them when necessary with a blow of his great round fist.

But one Sunday the little church in the tiny village had a guest preacher, and Peter Pulpitpounder found a place for himself in the balcony. How surprised he was to see that he hardly recognized his people from the back! Heads that looked bald from the front had a little shrubbery in back, and Peter did not know who those people were.

And with all those glaring glasses turned away from him as he sat in the balcony, the room seemed ever so quiet to Peter. When he looked straight down from his balcony perch, he discovered that God used as much humor in designing hair as He did in moulding faces. He saw hair parted in the middle, hair parted on the side, and hair not parted at all. And then, he saw a little boy below him whose hair seemed to start in the middle of his head and spin round and round, like a top.

Suddenly Peter realized, as he looked over these rows of fascinating heads and ears, that he was not listening to the preacher, for he had been thinking how different his congregation looked from the back. "Surely," Peter said to himself, "my people don't do this when I'm preaching. How lucky I am that no one knows what I have been thinking!"

Just then Peter noticed how different the guest preacher looked from the way Peter supposed he looked when he was pounding the pulpit. And as he walked down the balcony steps to take the morning offering he mused, "Do I look as strange to my congregation as they look to me?"