This morning, in TableTalk, the commentary about that same topic compares the unruliness of the tongue to fire. The article recalls how a number of years ago Florida experienced drought-like conditions, and authorities banned burning because they were afraid one little spark would begin a huge blaze.
James does compare the tongue to a fire:
And the tongue is a world of fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.” James 3:6 ESV
We know the effect of bad words. We know how bogus is the old adage “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” Words cause wounds that often take years to heal. However, what about the lack of using good words? We can avoid the use of potentially flammable speech, but do we consciously try and use good speech?
In an article from TableTalk entitled “Healing Words,” writer John Sartelle says:
But just as words have the power to wound and kill, words have the power to heal and restore. Jesus made blind people see and paralyzed people walk just by speaking.
Now, we will never do with our words what Jesus did with His, but we can do good things with our words. The lack of affirming words can be for some people completely devastating. I like to have words of encouragement from my family. I like to know in words that they appreciate me. My mother was a victim of not being given verbal affirmation. When she was 17 years old, she had the misfortune to find herself pregnant. My grandmother was furious, and she made it known. My mother quit school and got full time work, and lived with her parents, her mother never letting her forget what she’d done. When my brother was a year old, she met my father, a man who really didn’t mind that his new friend had a little boy. When Dad took mom home to meet his mother, my grandmother said something encouraging to my mother: “Don’t feel embarrassed about your situation. It happens to lots of people; it happened to my own sister.” That word of encouragement set my mother right at ease, and she enjoyed a good relationship with her mother-in-law.
Her own mother was a different story. My grandmother never gave my mother one word of encouragement; in fact, she continually compared my mother to her sister, how her sister was so good at this, didn’t make any mistakes. Fast forward about forty years to when my grandparents were old and infirm, and my mom’s sister forged my grandfather’s signature and took $10,000. I think my grandmother lived with an unusually foggy set of glasses.
My grandmother died four years ago. My mother never felt like her mother loved her. My mother says my grandmother never told her that she loved her, never told her she was proud of her, that she liked our family, and that she was happy that my mother’s life had turned out so well. She died without ever saying such a thing, and now that she is gone, it torments my mother, because she knows that the chance for the kind word is completely gone. My mother lived her entire life with her mother in conflict. Her energy source seemed to be derived from the animosity between them. Instead of peace at the end of the conflict, I see that it is worse. I see that it still weighs on her mind that her mother for all intents and purposes was saying: “You’re no good.”
Proverbs 25:11 says: Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in the right circumstances.
I don't know what it would be like to lack the power of speech. If I were to ever meet with a serious illness, I think having a stroke that robbed me of speech would the most difficult to get used to. I pray that I will use the gift of speech to encourage when those right circumstances come up.
