WORDS OF LOVE

The tongue: the deadliest weapon in the world. The old schoolyard adage "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" is a lie. We can recover from physical wounds. The pain will eventually go away or at least abate enough to allow us to live well enough. But the damage our words inflict on another seems never to go away. Oh, we bury it deep inside our hearts and minds, but it resurfaces every so often and rekindles the pain that we thought had ended.

Added to the pain that words inflict is the knowledge that we sometimes utter those words without thinking. They roll off our lips before we can stop them. We can pull back our fist, we can drop the club, we can put away our weapons before we do any damage. There seems to be something in us with the ability to hold us back from doing damage with sticks and stones. But there seems to be less of that something when it comes to the words that come from our mouths.

I know I don't always curb my tongue even when I know better. And when I do not, I hurt others more than I will ever know just as others have hurt me by their words more than they will ever know. What I need, maybe what we all need, is the wisdom to know what to say, the courage to say it, and the strength to say nothing when nothing is what should be said.

There is a solution, of course, albeit not an easy one. It takes work, especially if we are prone to speaking before we think. It takes practice and it takes patience. It demands a change of heart and even a change of life. And that does not come easily and it comes, more often than not, painfully. It often comes only after we have hurt too many people with our words, people we truly love. The pain that we suffer is often more than the pain we caused by our words as it truly should be,

Granted, we will never totally succeed in being totally loving in word and in action given our human sinfulness. It will always be a struggle, more for some than others. But no one is immune from uttering words that in hindsight one wished one had not. That is not an excuse for opening our mouths when they should have remained shut. It is simply the truth about our humanity.

This is no perfect time or perfect season when words of love should easily flow from our lips and acts of love flow from our hearts. But, perhaps, summer being here, when life slows down just a little, perhaps we could be a little more intentional about what we do and what we say, think a little before we open our mouths. Maybe, as the sun warms our bodies, we can let it also warm our hearts and minds.

Summer is as good a time as any and probably better than most to make and take the time to learn how to be more intentional in what we say, to think before we open our mouths, to make sure that all our words are words of love. We teach others by our words just as much as we teach by example. It is an awesome responsibility, one that we dare not ever take lightly.