James Was Right

The tongue is a fire. At least, it has that potential.

It was the writer of the Epistle (Letter) of James in the New Testament of the Bible who called the tongue a fire. He said that it is very small but can create immense blazes with a tiny spark. He went on to say that we cannot tame our tongues. I’m here to tell you that he was right on the money.

All my life I have had to live with a tongue that has a mind of its own. It goes into action of its own accord. I don’t have to decide to say something; my mouth is open and the words are coming out before I know what I’m going to say. (Friends ask me how I think of those things, and the truth is that I don’t “think” of them at all. I’m as surprised by my words as they are!) In fact, occasionally I don’t even know I’m going to say anything at all until I hear words coming out of my mouth. It’s all the worse if I’m saying something about things I don’t have all the facts about. I have, mostly unintentionally, done quite a little hurtfulness with my tongue during my life.

But that was predominantly in my first (pre-Encounter) life. I still have the difficulty, but it isn’t as bad as it used to be, in my second (post-Encounter) life, because one day I got smart and asked my Source to help me with my tongue. Sometimes He holds it so I can’t blurt out the wrong thing. Sometimes He puts words on it. Even now, if I am surprised by something, you can get the full flavor of my reaction or opinion. But overall, I have learned to recognize and heed the promptings Source has given me about my tongue. My speech can still get me into trouble, but I have had a much simpler life overall since Source took over my tongue.

I will never forget the first time Source rescued me from my, shall I say, straightforwardness. I had recently signed for a house and moved in. It was late spring and I was trying to plant some grass in the strip of lawn behind the house. Weeds had to be dug up, pulled up by the roots, soil had to be hoed and raked, and so on, and I was not accustomed to doing yard work. I asked a friend to come and help me. It was warm of course, downright hot in fact. (This was in Dallas, and even if you start in the morning you’re soon hotter than you want to be.) We hoed and dug and raked and pulled out weeds and I sweated and sweated. There was a moment when I became utterly exasperated with the heat in general and the project in particular. I needed to say something really nasty about how I was feeling, and I actually opened my mouth and drew breath to use language that was as hot as I was…and at that moment I thought, Good heavens, I can’t say that around Ken. Words started to come out, and they astonished me, for they said something like this: “I cannot believe that the pioneers cleared the land and started their farms without the tools we have today!”

Neither could I believe I had said that! It expressed what I was feeling, but it was totally removed from what I had intended to say. (Ken wouldn’t have said anything, but that language would have bothered him.)

There have been many times like that since.

There have been a few times also when I was apparently given messages for the people I was with. This time I was with Bill, in the car one time. We were driving home from work. (Sometimes he and I carpooled.) He was, like me, a trained musician and he was discouraged about his efforts to find work in his field. The car radio was playing “The Ride of the Valkyries”, and abruptly I was saying something like this: “I have no idea what’s going on in the opera here, when they’re doing this music, but it always makes me think of an army of grim-faced female warriors riding their horses to a big battle. Nothing will deter them. They will prevail one way or another.” And somehow the words connected that to Bill and his discouragement. I don’t remember what Bill said, but I think the words helped him. As I continued to drive, I started to feel as though I were breaking out of a dream or some odd waking state, and I was thinking, Did I really say that? Where did that come from, anyway? For lack of a better explanation, I concluded that Source had probably put those words on my tongue and spoken to my friend through me. He will do that; He speaks to us in all sorts of ways, often through others’ words or actions.

There have been moments in pressure situations – oral exams, job interviews – when I really didn’t know what I should say in answer to a question, but when I opened my mouth to try to come up with an answer…there it was, tripping out as though I had planned it.

There is a promise in the Bible that if we have to testify before the authorities, what today we might call the thought police or religion police, our words will be given to us. Now that is a Biblical promise I trust. I’ve experienced it too many times to react otherwise. We often have trouble with Biblical promises that we haven’t experienced in our own lives, or seen in the lives of those close to us. I do, at least. But this one I bet on. When I need control it is there. When I need words they are there.

It’s cool.