‘I’m just telling everyone’

The TV commercial caught my attention. One gal is on a mountaintop, yelling at the top of her lungs to another gal on a distant mountain. The message she’s belting out over the chasm below? She’s telling her that when she needs new eyeglasses, she should go to a particular vision store.

“How could you see that I wear glasses from such a distance?” the hearer yells back with equal volume.

“I couldn’t,” comes the loud reply. “I’m just telling everyone.”

Then she turns her head and, with determination and enthusiasm, shouts “Hey! When you need a new pair of glasses . . .”

It’s a Vision Works ad that first appeared in 2022, but it pops up from time to time.

Why did this ad capture my focus? Three reasons: 1) The volume of her voice and the sense of urgency and excitement she conveyed; 2) She was not singling out people, but was telling “everyone” – just in case they needed her message, and 3) To climb a mountain and then do all that yelling, she must have been extraordinarily happy with how she was treated, to say nothing of her new glasses.   

Because the ad was filmed in the mountains, the Christmas carol “Go Tell It on the Mountain” came to mind: “Go, tell it on the mountain, Over the hills and everywhere, Go, tell it on the mountain That Jesus Christ is born.” (African-American spiritual).

The woman in the ad also reminded me of Bill Gaither’s “Get all excited, go tell everybody that Jesus Christ is King, get all excited, go tell everybody that Jesus Christ is still the King of Kings.”

Finally, I recalled some song lyrics I have not heard in years: “I’ll tell the world how Jesus saved me, and how He gave me a life brand new; And I know that if you trust Him, that all He gave me, He’ll give to you.” (There are several more verses to this song: “I’ll Tell the World That I’m a Christian.” Look them up. Words and music are by Baynard L. Fox).

As Christians, we have a message far more important than where to shop for your next pair of eyeglasses, don’t we?

Are we conveying this message with confidence so that people can hear us? Do we declare it with both urgency and excitement? Have we thought about going out of our way and putting in a little extra effort to tell the Gospel, which means good news? (Indeed, very good news.) Do we communicate it with a combination of conviction and joy?

Let’s be more like the woman in the Vision Works commercial:

“I’m just telling everyone!”

Or, for that matter, remember what the shepherds did after they found the Babe lying in a manger?

“After seeing Him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this Child.”  (Luke 2:17, NLT).