Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.11UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.09UNLIKELY
Fear
0.12UNLIKELY
Joy
0.58LIKELY
Sadness
0.54LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.62LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.07UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.73LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.93LIKELY
Extraversion
0.11UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.56LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.64LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Prayer
I think most if not all of you are aware that I currently preach here every Sunday...
But also have a job down the street at IMARC Research...
I’ve been there for a little over 12 years now, and I can tell you that one of the constants that I’ve seen as part of that job in all that time is this - LISTS
Most of the employees at IMARC travel for their jobs...
and so ANY meeting that i find myself in...
…NO DOUBT there will be at least 4-5 people...
who KEEP A LIST...
A list of TASKS
Contacts
Projects
Lists - maybe you’re a LIST person, i don’t know...
I TRY TO BE!
I try to be - BECAUSE - I’m trying to get better at managing my - TIME
I marvel at how well my coworkers manage their time -
Traveling
coming back
writing reports
traveling again BEFORE that report is finished
coming back again
Finishing the first report while starting the 2nd
It’s impressive…and LISTS are things meant to help us manage our - TIME
and they do it well
TIME is an interesting thing...
ALL of us would probably agree that we WISH we had - MORE TIME in the day to get done what we need to get done...
We all WISH we had MORE of this thing called TIME - and yet...
We ALL have the same amount - of it
AND WE NOW - have to - MANAGE the time that we’ve all been given...
…making choices in how we APPROACH the time we have
NOW - Solomon, the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, the book we’ve been walking through...
…decides to tackle this TOPIC of - - TIME…which we’ll see today.
As we read this text - you can feel the UPS and the DOWNS of life....no?
A time to KILL (low) and a time to HEAL (High)
A time to break down (low) and a time to build up (High)
And MAYBE you even had memories of moments in your life as we read each of these BOOK ENDS...
Times when you’ve WEPT....times when you’ve LAUGHED...
Time when you’ve mourned....and times when you’ve DANCED… (and speaking of dancing…)
As we made our way through this text, did anyone start to hear the 1965 song by the Byrds…Turn, Turn, Turn?
That song was written from this passage...
and if you know the song, you know it’s just this real SLOW..
EASY-GOING...
Very melodic - - Jam
And i THINK - it can be easy for us to READ this passage THAT WAY...
very EASY-GOING....like the song...
BUT - if we’re going to keep this chapter within the context of the whole book of Ecclesiastes...
I think it would be wise to READ it in a different way!
I don’t think that Solomon meant for us to read these words or understand these words in that...
SMOOTH
MELODIC
Easy-GOING kind of nature...
But INSTEAD to see them with the same kind of FRUSTRATION with which he saw everything else UNDER the SUN...
that is VANITY
And so maybe we could REIMAGINE the text and maybe INSERT some modern vernacular to give us a better sense of the tone of Solomon...
It might sound something like this:
There’s a time for a healthy pregnancy…and there’s a time for miscarriage
There’s a time for chemo therapy…and there’s a time for remission
There’s a time for enjoying the fellowship of family…and there’s a time when that screaming baby will keep you up ALL night - every night.
There’s a time to enjoy your child’s DESIRE to snuggle you…and there’s a time to feel the PAIN when they want nothing to do with you.
There’s a time to enjoy the camaraderie of classmates...and there’s a time to mourn their passing from disease and old age.
There’s a time to view your PARENTS as STRONG as superheroes…and there’s a time to watch them FADE…into FRAILTY …and into the grave.
And when we read it like this…FEEL it like this...
I believe we can say ALONG with what Solomon has been saying all along...
VANITY...
We’re prisoners of this thing called TIME (24 HOURS in a day)
And EVEN NOW -
it’s TICKING on both your life AND mine....at a MACRO and a MICRO level!
At a MICRO_LEVEL - this very moment in time - you’ve chosen to spend this time doing this very thing here with us today...
At a MACRO_LEVEL - this singular moment - this moment is a moment in time that you will never have back...
AND you are 1 MOMENT closer to DEATH than you were when we started just a second ago.
VANITY!
And what do we SEE?
SLIDE: TIME: Man is Limited
IN TIME
And one of our ISSUES with TIME, is that we live in a - REACTIVE POSTURE to time...
And what we see here as we GET A BIRD’S EYE VIEW to our text today -
Is that most of the things listed here are things that - HAPPEN TO us...
And so we spend our whole lives trying to figure out HOW TO appropriately RESPOND to these things… (Start most days with plans)
**examples of RESPONDING to life . . .
(Rachel sat down last night…Tenley woke up crying)
And so IN A SENSE - we’re actually PRISONERS of time...
We’re LIMITED!
How many of you - more often than not - feel like a PRISONER of time… (with every selfie post made on facebook, there’s ONE MORE wrinkle on the face…)
Time is moving, never stopping, and we CAN’T HELP - but flow DOWN THAT STREAM!
And when we actually REALIZE THIS is happening - we get this unsettling realization that we -
REALLY DON’T CONTROL ANYTHING…that’s happening
*Does that mean we don’t TRY to take control?
Not at all....
We’ll try to take control...
We buckle our seat belts…even on an airplane
We eat organic
We invest in a 401K
We go GREEN
We get rid of cable
We get yearly check-ups
We take supplements
We take vitamins
We work-out
And yet ALL of these things are really just fooling us into THINKING we can exercise control over the circumstances of life.
We can’t!
*Anyone know somebody who was IN-SHAPE…worked out all the time, and just dropped dead one day at a young age?
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9