Presbyterian preacher Thomas Hilton tells of watching Billy Graham on television a few years back, when his small daughter Karin came into the living room and looked at the television set and exclaimed, “Dad, what is he so mad about?” To a small child the body language of a person is often more important than the verbal language.  She saw the raised arm, heard the loud voice, saw the intense face, and assumed anger.  I have an idea that was not the message that Billy was trying to get across, but children are especially good at reading the body language of adults.  And sometimes our actions speak much louder than our words. 

This familiar fact has opened up a whole new realm of study.  We call it “body language,” and it was popularized by a book of that title written by Julius Fast.  The …