♪A Note of Thanks ♪
A Word of Hope and Something to Ponder
Gentle words are healers and helpers; but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit. Proverbs 15:4
Do you ever get angry at someone and say unkind words to them or about them, whether family, friends, church family or co-workers?
As a boy, I was raised in East Lake on Third Avenue South, with elm trees that hovered over the street, like a tunnel in the Summer, and bungalow houses with grass cut neat and trim, with sidewalks on both sides of the street. The neighborhood children would ride their bicycles on the sidewalks waving at those sitting on their front porches. On our block three churches were represented: East Lake Methodist, 76th Street Presbyterian and Ruhama Baptist Church. We lived one and a half blocks from the old Howard College Campus (now Samford University). Almost everyone had some sort of garden to tend, whether flowers or delicious vegetable gardens. It seemed that everything was within walking distance to department stores, grocery stores, drug stores, churches, schools, a theatre and even the old East End Hospital.
During warm weather, we would play outside sometimes until after dark where the lightening bugs would appear to glow, yonder in the dark…a flash here and a flash there…blink, blink, blink. Sometimes we’d have an old Mason jar that would have holes punched out of the lid to let in air. We would catch lightening bugs and put them in the jar thinking that we’d keep them as pets. Sometimes we’d catch ‘roly-polies’ or caterpillars. We might even crush them with a rock or our fingers. If it had been raining or was very humid and moist, we might find a snail (actually a slug) and pour salt on it and watch it melt away. We might even stomp little black ants.
The other Sunday, my high school counselor, Sue Sims, asked me to teach her Sunday School Class, a group of wonderful ladies. The lesson was on the story of David bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem so that they might truly worship God in the sacred place. At the beginning of the class period, I asked each lady to introduce herself and to tell us something interesting about them self. It was a great way for us to get to know each other. Prior to the lesson, and as a way for us to get focused, the class did an exercise following verbal instructions and drawing a picture on the paper provided. If the instructions were followed correctly, the picture would end up being a sailboat, but there was one key part missing…the rudder. Basically, without the rudder, the sailboat would just go in circles.
As King David needed everyone to worship God by bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem, we need God to control the rudder of our ship and our lives. Also, we need to let God control our tongues and bring peace and harmony in our lives. Like the caterpillar, how often, as children or adults, have we callously brushed aside or destroyed small lives such as those without any regard for environmental consequences? Without the caterpillar going through its short life cycle, it cannot become a beautiful butterfly. How often have we injured the spirit of another human being with a thoughtless word that would change that person’s future forever?
We see the same motif repeated throughout the Bible, too. James compares the tongue, such a little thing, to the rudder of a ship guiding it into peaceful seas or destroying it on the treacherous rocks.
Whether we choose to use our feet to squash a harmless spider or our tongues to crush a spirit, these supposedly irrelevant actions do matter to God, and who can predict when our future can be changed by a thoughtless action forever?
Loving God, teach me to tread lightly in Your world. Help me to be a person that brings peace and harmony wherever I go. Shine Your Light in and through me, so that others make know of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gives us abundant life. Fill us anew with Your precious Holy Spirit. In Your Holy Name. Amen.
With a grateful heart for serving alongside you as we sail life’s seas, I am your friend,
Mark David Jackson
