Go Now and Gather Your Words
The Sunday School teacher was about to make a point. The idea came that it might be high time to teach a little lesson about little words to the little children. Yes, they were studying His Word, and the teacher wanted to give the children a visual to remember. Having been inspired by a story she’d heard years ago, about a man who lived years ago, she thought perhaps now was the time to invest in her students. She was about to duplicate a lesson that had been carried out by Philip Neri. He was trying to teach a woman in his congregation a lesson about words spoken. Plenty of pain her words did cause around town and the woman needed a bit of correcting. So what did he do? Read on…
The Bible verses relating to the lesson were plentiful.
Proverbs 18:21 speaks. “The tongue has the power of life and death…”
James 3:6 says: “How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! The tongue is a fire.”
Ephesians 4:29 is bold: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths…”
Psalms 34:13 clarifies: “Keep your tongue from evil and our lips from telling lies.”
Finding that which was needed for the object lesson wasn’t all that difficult as she could picture in her mind what was about to go down. The lesson would be easy to duplicate.
Gather her students she did one day. With scissors in hand and a fluffy pillow in the other, the group walked outside. The children were asked what they thought about words spilling forth from their mouths that were not necessarily uplifting. Each child was in agreement that no word should be left unchecked. The teacher continued on with the visual yet to come.
She explained, just as Philip of Niri did to his parishioner so long ago, words spoken were like feathers. Once out of the bag, most were no longer retrievable. Rumors and idle tales spill forth being carried away to who knows where and like feathers, they fly helter-skelter and cannot be taken back.
Like the wise teacher did so long ago, this teacher handed the children a pillow filled with feathers and asked them to shake the contents of the pillow out. They were then asked to go and retrieve every single feather and place them back into a bag from whence they’d come. Immediately, the children caught what was taught and explained that this would be impossible as into the wind each feather had long gone.
Each teacher made their points by passing on this life lesson via visually embedding the scene before them into the souls looking on.
May we steer clear of such a lesson needed, but a beautiful reminder it tis. “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to You, O Lord.” (Psalm 19:14). Amen.