Moving Too Fast?

This weekend’s Fresh Manna is brought you by my wife – Renee Burt

This past week, I accidentally broke a glass when I was unloading the dishwasher. I was moving too fast, and I knocked it just right to cause it to not only break…but to jam the jagged edge down deeply into my thumb. Thankfully, none of the glass got imbedded, but the cut was so deep, I really should have had it stitched up. Instead, I wrapped it up tightly in so much gauze, it looked like the missing finger of some mummy…which was bothersome, to say the least! But even more bothersome was the fact that it became the focus of my attention…it was all about how to do things without anything bumping into the wound and reopening it. I quickly found out it was a wound that was hard to heal.

And that’s really how it can be with our words. We might intentionally or accidentally say something to someone that cuts them deeply when we’re moving our mouths too fast! And the danger of that? Those words can create a wound in that other person’s heart that can become hard to heal. They can become the focus of their thoughts as they replay them over and over again in their mind, making it hard for their heart to heal…because those words have wounded their self-esteem, or their confidence, or their trust, or their security, or their assurance that they’re loved and accepted. So, although I wasn’t happy about my mummified thumb this week, I was happy to be reminded of this verse…and the need to slow down not just in the kitchen, so I don’t wound myself…but to slow down when I speak, so my words don’t wound someone else!

Proverbs 15:4 MSG ~ Kind words heal and help; cutting words wound and maim.

More devotions from Renee’s Fresh Manna