The power of words. I don't think that we stop and think sometimes what words can do. What images they conjure up. How they can tell a story. How they can mean one thing to one person and something totally different to someone else.
For instance. I want you to close your eyes and just softly say to yourself the word "flower."
Did you do it? What image came to mind? A bouquet? A daisy? A lily?
Now, I want you to close your eyes again and this time focus and softly say the word "rose".
What image came to mind that time?
They are the same but different. Both words mean flower, but one of them is more distinct. It doesn't even matter what color it is in your minds eye. It was there. Your preference as to the color. But you still knew what the rose looked like. You could practically smell it.
If I had said honeysuckle that would have been the image that came to mind.
If a rose was not called a rose but had been named bush or tree or apple or even cockroach or whatever, it would be known as that name. It would still be beautiful and fragrant and the same as it always has been from the moment God caused it to grow in the garden.
Adam did a good job!
But what about other words.
We say house and we say home. They are the same but different. A house is a dwelling. A home is where your heart longs to be at the end of the day, a haven. You buy a house and turn it into a home. Remember at the end of the day as children and you would be playing down the street and the street lights would start to come on and you knew you had better get going. You never said to your friends, "Bye, I gotta go to my house." No, you always said, "I gotta go home." House is where you lived, home is where you loved.
What about children? We say child, children or son or daughter, (sometimes even brat). They all say the same thing. We differentiate by how we describe them. Isn't it funny but even in that venacular it is said, "I raised my kids." But then we also say, "I trained my children." Says the same thing but it denotes something different.
Words. We use them everyday to tell our stories. To teach. To heal. To hurt. To mend or tear apart. There are so many words in the human language we could never know them all. I don't think our brains could scarce take them all in. But yet, so many times we use them so flippantly not knowing or sometimes caring the weight that they have behind them.
The Word of God talks about taming our tongue in James 3:1-12. In a nutshell it tells us to "Watch our mouths". It says that we set our course, our lives, by what we say. We praise God and curse people with the same mouth. It shouldn't be that way.
When I was a little girl we learned a song in Childrens Church. The one line said "Oh be careful little mouth what you say, Oh be careful little mouth what you say, There's a Father up above and He's looking down in love, Oh be careful little mouth what you say."
I have always told my children, "Measure your words carefully. They come out of your mouth better than they fit back in."
We don't always think about what we say. We just say what we want and let the chips fall where they may.
We think if we hurt someone by what we are saying, intentional or not, "Well, I'll just say I am sorry." And you can do that and you truly might mean it. And most possibley that person will forgive you. But forever and a day that thing that you said to them will reverberate in their mind.
I am getting to be an older woman now and not because I want to but because it has always been, I can still remember the hurtful things that have been said to me. The things that pierced my heart through and through by people that loved me. I have forgiven them, and hopefully they have forgiven me for the things that I said to them, but even after all these years those words still ring in my ears. I only wish I could remember as well the encouraging words. The ones that lifted me up. But I can't. I remember a few, but more so I remember the stinging words.
Satan is like that you know. He wants us to dwell on the things that hurt us. The things that killed our spirit. The very things that gave us a self image that was not God like at all.
You see we were created in His image. But we have allowed someones words to dictate who we are and what we have become. We are no longer that image of the beautiful Rose of Sharon we have become a horrible little stink bug because we listened to the words of someone else instead of our Maker.
So yes, a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. But I don't want to be any other name than Child of God. Created in His image.
I am not going to listen to what the world has to say about me or how it even defines me. And I am going to do my best to start seeing the image that God created every human being into and start using those words.
I know that there will be times that I will fail. But I am going to try.
Here are a few verses if you want to know what God says about our mouths, our words. Oh be careful little mouths.
Genesis 11:6
Exodus 20:7, 20:16
Leviticus 5:4, 19:16-17
Psalm 19:14, 109:1-31, 119:89-93, 119:105
Proverbs 6:2, 10:19, 11:12, 12:18-19, 12:25. 13:3, 15:1-4, 15:23, 16:23-24, 17:9, 17:27-28, 18:8, 18:13, 18:20-21, 21:23, 25:11, 25:25, 27:2, 29:20
Ecclesiastes 7:20-22
Isaiah 54:17
Jeremiah 5:13
Mathew 7:12, 12:34-37, 15:18
Luke 6:45,
John 1:1, 3:34, 8:31-32,
Romans 4:17, 10:8, 10:17, 12:14
1 Corinthians 4:20
2 Corinthians 2:17, 4:2
Ephesians 4:29, 5:3-4, 6:17
Philippians 4:6-7
1 Thessalonians 2:13
Colossians 2:4-8, 3:8, 4:6
Hebrews 4:12
James 1:22-27, 3:1-12,
1 John 1:8
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