Words
Words are very important to me. God knows this about me, and He prepared for me a husband who was good at sharing words with me. I found my soul mate in a man who believes that words are powerful and well used words are life-altering and soul-healing, and misused words are life-crushing and soul-wounding. But to him, the spoken word is penultimate. He felt that you lived and died by speech; were accepted or rejected according to what you said. Every word was weighed, every sentence parsed, even his own.
Not so for me. Certainly, the spoken word is significant, but words on the tongue are fleeting, becoming distant memories or misshapen monsters haunting the closets of the mind. The written word held more sway in my soul, brought more joy to my heart and more satisfaction to my intellect. I could count on it not to change, not to argue back, but to be there when I needed its encouragement, its wisdom or its escape. When I did not have knowledge necessary for living because no one had spoken the knowledge to me, I knew that I could find the knowledge written down somewhere. I felt that anything I could ever want to learn could be found in a book.
Isn’t that what the Scriptures are? Indeed, God’s infinite love and wisdom give direction for our lives by His written word. Any moral or spiritual question we have, God has graciously given us a place to turn to find His heart, His mind and His will. I might here note that the church I first attended when I became a Christian supported this world view, and by extension, this God view.
But I always felt behind, that I wasn’t learning fast enough, and that others did not lack the learning and wisdom I was still looking for. I felt perpetually left out, as though there were some secret that others were keeping from me.
So what was I missing? Were others reading books I hadn’t read? That seemed an unlikely option, since I was, by far, the most voracious reader I had met or heard of. Were they understanding more of what they read than I was? This too seemed unlikely. No matter where I looked, I could not find answers, or finding them, I was not open to seeing.
It wasn’t until years after I was married to a godly man who cherished the spoken word that it dawned on me. God hadn’t stopped at the written word to guide us. He had also provided the Living Word through His Son, Jesus, as an example we could look to, and had followed that by providing His Spirit to live within us and ‘speak’ God’s teachings directly to our minds and souls. And most amazing, He gave us each other to give each other the words of His heart. He gives us the opportunity to use our words to heal the wounds of others, both within His family and outside it.
I learned that it is good to value the spoken word. And it is good to value the written word. And it is infinitely better to value them both. And I learned that there is much more to words than writing or speaking. Words can be lived out in our lives, in our hearts. All these things work together, through His people, to make us righteous, which is to be at peace with God.
There is no end to my enjoyment of writing in its many shapes and styles. But I did not truly grow and heal within until I understood the place of spoken words in the Christian’s life. The written word has a special place, to be sure, but not a solitary position as I had thought. Although the spoken word does tend to pass, and the written word does tend to endure (until it’s burned, lost or thrown away), what will outlast them both is us. Words write themselves on souls, whether for good or evil, and the soul is eternal. And so, whatever form our words take, whether written, spoken or lived in silence, may they always be words that reconcile enemies into brothers,that heal deep wounds and tell the broken and scarred that they are beautiful.
Valerie R. Yarbro 2008
