How do I use the Power in Words

Words can have an amazing shelf life.

Like nitro, they have explosive potential to do great harm or great good.  They may judge or simply grant forgiveness.

Ah, but when a relationship builds, words are the brick and mortar that build the foundation.

I just watched a movie about duets, two voices, a flowing melody with harmony to cradle it, illustrating the relationships taking place.  It brought to mind so many conversation with runaways, homeless and street kids.

Souls used to the tinny sounds of lies, comments that lead to crashes and sometimes sirens.  So used to the biting and cutting remark, the snap judgment, that the soft sound of grace and acceptance takes practice to hear.

These lessons I gleaned from street souls seeking a trustworthy word, an honesty they had yet to find.

Christ did not reach out in silence, but in word and action.  Jesus described himself as the “word of life,” speaking with love. We need to ask ourselves:   Do I know Him this way?  Have I committed His loving words to heart?

Am I able to use His words with love and respect to a sinner, rather than in judgment?  Why is it difficult to love  others as myself, like Christ asked me?  How did He reflect love through words?

Not in Part but the Whole

For Valentine's Day

I Corinthians 13: 4-13 (NLT)

Love is patient and kind.  Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.  It does not demand its own way.  It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.  It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.  Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.  Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless.  But love will last forever!   Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture!  But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.  When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child.  But when I grew up, I put away childish things.  Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.  All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.  Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.