It Goes With Saying

I'm not sure we often hear the words 'sex' and 'God' in the same discussion much!  But we probably should, since God has clearly told us that everything we do should be for His glory.  But, what in the world does that even mean?

Solomon, a wise man called The Preacher, once said, "Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few." (Ecclesiastes 5:2) Words do matter.  But, to whom?

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with words for most of my life (which must be quite obvious from the topics in this blog!). On the one hand, without words it would be very difficult to tell you about anything.  Like, something that happened to my friend Sarah yesterday at the park and why I was so upset.  ( Though I don't have a friend named Sarah, didn't go to the park, and was not the least upset. )   Or for that matter, without words I would be unable to tell you what I hoped to be doing five years from now and why.  ( Here you breathe a huge sigh of relief .) If you want to know ( and even if you don't ), ....

Election seasons always lead me to thinking again about the power of words (when don't I?).    Have we ever been so bombarded with them as we are today?  It used to be just books, magazines, and newspapers—and  maybe the occasional Saturday night newsreel.  Now, besides TV, we’ve got the 24/7 global bombardment from take-it-with-you-everywhere personal communication devices. It's the iKnow generation.   If the law of supply and demand applies to words, then surely words aren’t worth much anymore.  Who can trust them?

How many of you remember what mud pies tasted like?  No, really, … you never ate them?  Well, I was a country girl, born in the post-war 40’s into a self-reliant middle class family, and I guess there just wasn’t much to do.  Inventiveness was high on the list of activities.    I rode in the apple-crate express train in the backyard to nowhere.  So, it wasn’t a far stretch to use whatever else was handy to pass away the long, lonely hours in a three-year-old’s day. 

It started in elementary school.  I was a good student, made good grades, but I had this one problem.  I talked too much.  Always.  Anyway, my penmanship became very good.  Largely, I'm sure, due to the hundreds and hundreds of sentences I had to stay after school and write, which said "I will not talk in class".  Eventually, I did learn to restrain my tongue somewhat and started writing and passing notes instead.  Was better at that...didn't get caught as much.  It seems I just can't help myself...I love to talk.