One of my favorite Far Side cartoons shows a game show in progress. The three contestants include an old man with yards of white hair and beard. The emcee is saying, "That's right, Wisconsin! And so it looks like God has 500 points while Norm, our current champion, has zero!" It's a wonderful and creative statement of the omniscience of God and, in comparison, the foolishness of man. You would not want to go on Jeopardy against God. In fact, anyone against God is in jeopardy!

Or take my favorite "Wizard of Id" comic strip. The dwarfish king of Id enters the Wiz's workshop to find him staring through a telescope. "Whacha looking for, Wiz?" he asks. The astrologer says, "The center of the universe." The little king calmly says, "Speaking." Again, it's a powerful and entertaining expression of self-centeredness so much in vogue today. Both of these little sermons were preached by cartoonists.

What is it about preachers and cartoonists? They seem to have a mutual attraction. It's a mite paradoxical, isn't it, that those people called of God to do the most serious work in the universe -- proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ -- almost unanimously enjoy the fun of a good laugh from a cartoon. Perhaps the wit was on the mark who said life is too important to be taken seriously.

Yet I wonder if we preachers give the cartoons and their creators enough credit for what they're able to do. Most people take these drawings as mental bubble gum, enjoy the point they make or the smile they evoke, then exit for the left side of the brain where we do the heavy lifting of sermon work. That is a big mistake. The craft of the cartoonist has a lot to say to the work of the preacher.

I started drawing cartoons as a pre-schooler, and began preaching as a senior in college. At the age of 59, I still do both every week of my life. I've noticed that the two activities share many traits in common. Everybody is an authority on both, regardless of whether they can give a talk in Sunday School or draw a stick figure.

Get a few cartoonists together and soon they will bring up a pet peeve about people with no sense of humor who don't have a clue as to how to read a cartoon, yet who feel qualified to fire off criticisms to editors and tirades to syndicates. We preachers have been there and done that. How many times we have wished our critics could try sermon preparation and delivery for just one month -- twelve messages for many of us -- to see how difficult it is and how impossible to please some people in the pews. Let them have the experience of waking out of a sound sleep with the sermon motor going, stumble into the study to jot down an insight before it slips out into the night, and then try to get back to sleep. Let them experience the Saturday night panic and the Sunday night depression. Just once.

Ahem. Sorry. Now, back to my subject. Preachers and cartoonists share a lot in common. They live by deadlines, they need to be wordsmiths, everything is grist for their mill, their craft (i.e., sermons and cartoons) works on different levels and rarely does one hit everyone in the target audience. When they do their work really well, they may expect someone to be offended. One more thing: both groups do a lot of their work sitting at a table or desk staring at a blank sheet of paper.