Frederick Buechner, from Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale

But to preach the Gospel is not just to tell the truth but to the the truth in love, and to tell the truth in love means to tell it with concern not only for the truth that is being told but with concern also for the people it is being told to…the prophets spoke truth, too, and that was when they were most truly prophetic. They did not speak the good news because the good news had not broken yet, but they spoke news. They put words to things until their teeth rattled, but beneath the words they put, or deep within their words, something rings out which is new because it is timeless, the silence rings out, the truth that is unutterable, that is mystery, that is the way things are, and the reason it rings out seems to be that the language the prophets use is essentially the language of poetry, which more than polemics or philosophy, logic or theology, is the language of truth.