I have been reading a book by the famous American psychologist Martin Seligman called Authentic Happiness.

The book has some excellent insights. But it also misses some obvious things.

One of Seligman’s most helpful observations is that a person's reflection upon a past event is far more determined by how the event concludes than what actually happens in the event.

He tells a vivid story of an experiment involving a painful medical procedure. In the experiment half the subjects just had the procedure while the other half had the procedure followed by a few seconds of further pain. But the pain was much less intense than that of the actual procedure. The total pain was greater for the second group than for the first; but the final pain was less for the second group than the first. All subjects were asked to rate the pain they experienced. Everyone in the second group rated the pain much lower than did those in the first group. Hence the conclusion that how you end determines how you feel about something.

Ending a sermon

I shared this with my chaplaincy group at Moore College and our discussion moved to sermons where many claimed the response to a sermon was shaped by the prayer at the end of the sermon and what immediately followed.

These comments set me thinking. My guess is that most of us who preach, even if we use full scripts for the sermon, don't script the prayer - and it is the prayer that shapes our attitude to what was preached. Often we conclude with a prayer which is the preacher summarising to God what he has preached to the congregation. Other times the prayer is perfunctory and is used as a means of saying the sermon is over. Let's think about what the appropriate response in prayer to the Lord should be following proclamation of His word, and make our prayers meaningful.

The lack of thought can also be seen in what happens after prayer. Sometimes, especially when the sermon is near the end of the gathering, announcements will follow, most of which don't involve me. So I am left bored, disengaged, and leave the gathering with announcements in my head rather than God's precious revelation.

If we expend as much effort on how we end our events as we do on beginning them (which we must do well), it surely would be a good thing.