Do you remember a time when you were taunted on a schoolyard playground? Do you remember how those words stung? Did you fight back? Did you over compensate? Did you just go home and cry?
Did you ever present an idea to your company to only have your boss or a coworker cut you down in front of the whole staff? Did you want to crawl into a hole and hide or lash out at them in some way?
The old adage says, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” The reason we know it so well and say it, is because it isn’t true. We want it to be true. We wish the words didn’t hurt so much but they do. We can chant “but words will never hurt me” like a mantra, but our hearts still ache and tears still flow from our eyes. Broken bones heal. We will recover. We will walk again and throw again. It won’t hurt anymore and the pain will be a distant memory.
But words seem to hurt forever. Many of us, even decades later can still recall the exact painful words – words from our teacher, our parent, our former friend , and we can immediately feel the hurt and pain again.
In James chapter 3, our Lord’s brother talks about how difficult it is to tame our tongue, and the great potential for harm it has. In fact, he says that if we can control our tongue, there’s nothing in our lives we can’t control. We are able to be a perfect person.
If taming the terrible tongue is so impossible, are we without hope? Is there nothing to be done about our words? Join us this Sunday.