A New Day

By: Pastor Johnie Akers     

Proverbs 25:11, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pitchers of silver.”  In a country church of a small village an altar boy serving the priest at Sunday Mass accidentally dropped the cruet of wine.  The village priest struck the altar boy on the cheek and in a gruff voice shouted:  “Leave the altar and don’t come back!”  In the cathedral of a large city an altar boy serving the bishop at Sunday Mass accidentally dropped the cruet of wine.  With a warm twinkle in his eyes the bishop gently whispered:  “Someday you will be a priest.”  The first boy grew up to be the tyrannical Communist leader of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito.  The second boy grew up to be the great Archbishop Fulton Sheen.  Two boys, both on the same path, yet one guided by words of love and the other, misguided by harsh words of contempt.  Words have power.  In fact Proverbs 18:21 says, “The power of life and death are in the tongue.”  With our words we can bring healing and restoration, and with our words we can bring divisiveness and inflict great pain.  It is incumbent upon us, therefore, to choose our words wisely.  Think of it.  When God created the cosmos, He did so by His words:  “Let there be. . .”  Creation was as God declared it to be.  We have been created in God’s image.  Our world, each day, is a by-product of the words we speak.  Our future—our children’s future—is likewise dictated by the course we set with the words we speak.  How different, I wonder, would Europe might have been if a priest would have had a word of kindness for an errant altar boy?  This day brings us new opportunities to fashion not only our lives but the lives of those with whom we come in contact with the words we speak.  We should, therefore, be very pragmatic about the words we choose and not only the immediate effect but the long term consequences of our speech.  We form our world and the world of those around us by our words.  The question is, “What type of world are we creating?”  May our Lord give us wisdom to choose wisely and embrace the opportunities to speak life as we face this and each new day.