By: Iyo Embong

There’s an old saying that goes…’we should practice what we preach’.  It seems very profound, subtle and simple.  But I wonder why for some reasons or another not all of us seem to know what it means. Or…(maybe) doesn’t want to know.

This touches upon the question of our influence on others, what people see in us and feel from us.  Teaching isn’t just saying something.  It isn’t just the words we speak in the pulpit, classroom, home, office, and any other places or on finger-pointing occasions when we are laying down the law.  It isn’t something we can turn on and off at any given hour/time, because we are visible also at other hours/time.  It is both the subtle and obvious things that make up what we are.

“We can only preach well…only if we live well”.  Sometimes we speak as if just setting an example we sufficient, but it isn’t so much something we set, as it is everything we are.  Priest, pastors, teachers, parents, everyone, and all of us are an example, no matter what we do – or don’t do.  Whether we are honest or dishonest, concerned or indifferent, fair or unfair, we are an example of some sort, every hour and every instant.  The important point is what kind of example? Where are these young and impressionable people going if they go to where we’re going, if they do what we’re doing, if they think what we’re thinking – if they become what we are?

There is really no way for anyone to separate himself into segments, to say “at this hour I will preach this, at another hour I will practice something else” – for a teacher teaches what he is himself as well as teaching his subject.  “He doesn’t preach well who doesn’t live well”.

As one Preacher was preaching one time and ask the people if they can hear him.  One gentlemen from the back yelled out saying ‘can you please speak louder, your actions are drowning you’.  So we can preach and teach as well as we can, but it is in our actions that the people will listen to first.   It is often said that ‘the best preaching that anyone has ever done is not by words but through action’.

By: Iyo Embong