Our Words Matter! …Hello weekend readers. Lately on Facebook, X, TikTok, etc., an old quote has been going around in regards to our 2-sided lives. I looked into this quote and there are a lot of varieties of it, but in the end, each one said the same thing but to my consternation, I could not find the writer of this powerful quote. I could say it’s close to a quote from Confucius, but it isn’t his so, whoever wrote this I say “thank you” because my musings for this weekend were about how our words matter.

There is no arena worse than our politics right now and it is easy to shout out awful words so you can bombast your opponents. Sadly, those who say they are Christians are no different than others and sometimes, even worse. I admit my anger at a lot of this—it’s also easy to chime right in. Ugh, this is not what God wants for his beloved children.

Nothing can be starker about our words than The Message translation from Proverbs 18:21; “Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit—you choose.” OUCH! So, let’s look at the quote that is anonymous but powerful in so many ways…

Hate has 4 letters — so does Love
Enemies has 7 letters — so does Friends
Lying has 5 letters — so does Truth
Negative has 8 letters — so does Positive
Under has 5 letters — so does Above
Cry has 3 letters — so does Joy
Anger has 5 letters — so does Happy
Right has 5 letters — so does Wrong
Hurt has 4 letters — so does Heal

After reading this quote many times, I realized that, at least for me, it means “life is like a double-edged sword. So, now what do we do with those words that hurt and destroy? Well, a friend of mine who is a Yoga instructor uses this idea: we need to transform every negative side into an aura of positivity. Sounds good but an aura? And are we, as humans, actually able to ‘transform every negative word to a positive one’? I don’t think we can do that unless we flip the script to what the Bible wants us to do and in the power of those Scriptures we can get rid of the negative and rejoice in the positive! It takes practice and I can say that with authority because when my Irish temper comes up, holy-moly can I fling out the worst words about a person or situation, etc. In fact, I get so mad at myself I yell at myself saying, “dummy, why did you say that?” I suspect you’ve done the same thing as well.

A therapist friend of mine is like me and I’ve asked her how she tames the tongue and her answer is the same, “practice, practice, practice until it becomes a skill.” And she is right about this, and she is right that it is hard and takes more practice than we think it is!

Stop a moment and think of the times when words have pierced your heart, made you cry, made you mad, made your day a mess; how did you handle negative words? What comments did you throw back at that person? Did you even come to the point of “I’m sorry?”

Friends, our words and thoughts matter so choose positive words or no words at all. It’s hard to do but do it—the rewards lead to peace, joy, less stress, arguments and anxiety. Now you can feel better about yourself because the negativity isn’t feeding into you and you are now not feeding it out to others. It’s a win-win but it is your choice.

Life can be like a 2-sided coin. What you flip is what you get, right? But life is NOT a coin, it is a life of living with God’s love, grace, joy and incredible forgiveness (when our mouths shoot out something bad). As best as we can, we must choose to be gentle and kind towards others and to ourselves as well. So, yes—life is 2-sided but we all have the option to choose either the bad side or the better side of life. Choose wisely. AMEN.