I wanted to chat a bit about how we humans interact with one another. Our communication with each other can be really positive or very negative and hurtful. It seems as though it is an area in our life that always needs some work and some self examination, especially for us folks that want to seek God and claim to be Christian. Sometimes what others hear from us in our voice is not as we intended, and then there are those electronic paths of communications like texting and emails that are not easily interpreted correctly. And now we also suffer from “AI”, artificial intelligence that is emotionless and shallow. Press 1 for new customers, press 2 for service, etc. I hope “AI” is not storing my sometimes heated emotional responses to their questions as they delay me from speaking to a human. But I do think at least for myself “AI” has helped me appreciate human interactions in these types of situations more and more!
Some time ago my wife brought to my attention how even the tone of our voice can be hurtful, especially after being together for so long. It seems as though these situations arise more when we are not at our best, exhausted and stressed! We just have to leave the negative attitude out of our tone! At times it seems like Groundhog Day again and again because we tend to revisit these troubled areas. We now mostly know what response we will hear long before the question even leaves our lips! Important questions arise like “Where did you move my tools?” “Can you turn those lights off?” And answers like “I am going to wear those dirty work pants again” and “when I am done over here I will.” Boy, how many times I have heard phrases like that! In Proverbs we read: “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.” (Proverbs 16:22)
One of the worst things we can do is use disgusting words when we are in disagreement with each other. Our Creator reprimands us: “Thou shalt not kill!” Please remember Psalm 51:4: “Your tongue devises destruction, Like a sharp razor, working deceitfully.” We need to always remember that this short moment of strife is just a drip in the big bucket of our lives, as we together work through our martyrdom.
Our communication doesn’t always need to be with words. Back in my adolesence years, I remember sitting at the dinner table with a number of big eaters. Hoping I could get seconds, since my mouth was full I looked at a dish of food and make a grunting sound so others would know to please pass me some more taters. Well, that response was quickly corrected. And let us not forget gestures of communications we make with our murderous dagger eyes, cutting to and fro, and also our weaponized hands and fingers. Oh my!
The Good Lord saw it fit to not strand us on a deserted island, but instead to surround us in a corral with only one gate in and out, and elbow deep in the corral with other damaged people. It is simply what is necessary for our salvation!! Our love and actions are one way that we fulfill the scripture we read this morning: “Everyone therefore who shall confess in Me before men, I also will confess in him before My Father Who is in the heavens…And whosoever taketh not his cross and followeth after Me is not worthy of Me.” (Mt. 10:32, 38) Every word and action should be carefully delivered because we are supposed to be representing Christ, are we not?
The crown of marriage is a reminder of our need to surrender ourselves to our spouse, despite their struggles and damage. That is Christian love. We need to fight our lust to go to war when they hurt and offend us, after all aren’t we all thirsting for salvation? Did we really think life was going to be easy without any suffering? We all have an self-inventory of rotten smelling brokenness that is in need of culling. It is a matter of wanting to win an earthly sinful battle but losing precious ground in the war of our salvation!
And then of course our most important communications we have are those with our Creator. And we not only converse with Him through our active prayer life, we also communicate with Him through our love for one another, our actions, our tone and words we speak to one another with, and our fragrant demeanor in every aspect of our lives. “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but I have not love, I have become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.” [1 Cor. 13:1]
