Good Tuesday morning! At least it ain't snowing? Doesn't help much when it is this cold on a May morning. At some point in the far distant past of your life, at least we hope this now belongs only to the past, you probably said something you came to regret. I know that I have. Sometimes the devil even helps me remember those times in all their writhing pain of shame and remorse. The time we hope won't come around again is that time when the mouth, that megamotormouth just kept going on and on when we would have been much better off to have just kept quiet. Peter had a couple of those times in his life as an apostle. Paul may have done so and forgot to write about it in his letters. James, now he speaks from what appears to be humiliating personal experience.
"Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell." (3:5-6)
Yo! We think that may be overdone a bit, at least until painful recall brings back to mind one of those times in life that the ol' megamotormouth left us feeling the sting from the fires of hell. A world of iniquity comes to rest on us when the tongue takes off on its own. We may even imagine the time will come that such brilliant argument spews forth from our tongue in righteous anger that the opponent is left speechless and flabbergasted. However, when we let the megamotormouth go off, the result is most often one of personal humiliation. Few us are good at speaking out in anger. The flame of anger and speech usually are best kept apart. I have known men who seek out solitude just to give their angry words room to vent where no gets hurt. Probably a good idea that.
Of course, we place our hope in Jesus that one day the heart will be cleansed so that regrettable words never come forth again. Hallelujah for that day!
Bucky
No comments:
Post a Comment