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I have to disagree with Glass Planet who wrote  post called “Swine and Pearls but mostly Swine,” about blogging and words that fall on deaf ears. It’s not the lamentation I  disagree with. I sometimes ponder what is worst, to have your words left in obscurity,to be rendered invisible, or to draw people’s ire and hostility? It’s a question that is a bit like that old game we used to play as children, so which is worse, to freeze to death or burn to death?

Oh the angst and woe of writing and blogging….

I’ve been on the internet for a long time chatting with people. I have met the “Hatred, blind, stupid and vicious.” I have met it on the ground, IRL, too. It can be downright repugnant. Anyone ever doubt that sin is a real thing in the world, or believe that we are all just happy people who basically want to do good? Yes, well I have been thoroughly relieved of such notions. Perhaps 10% of my day involves other people pouring hateful words over me.

Hatred is just the flip side of love. It’s indifference we should fear.

I certainly don’t disagree with the  idea, “never doubt Jesus.” Oh, amen to that! “Nobody knows what they’re talking about like Jesus.  Sometimes it’s downright shocking how a look at a passage I’ve been reading for over fifty years can deliver fresh, slap-in-the-face clarity and put the world back in order.” Yes, yes, just beautifully stated. When it begins to feel as if I am trapped in an asylum run by insane clowns, The Word can bring order back to my universe, save me from the entropy that threatens to consume us all, and deliver clarity, that Living Water that is so vital when one becomes parched and confused.

No, the part I disagree with is the last paragraph, “The spoken word has no power.  None.  The only words that matter are the ones that are heard and swine aren’t known for listening.”

Au contraire. The spoken word is everything and it has tremendous power. It has so much power, our Lord Himself is often called The Word. We could even say we  ourselves are simply  a word He once spoke into existence, a word He continues to speak into existence, like a potter always refining His creation. We are just a spoken word and as  such, our words too have creative power. The words we speak over ourselves and others are everything, they write the whole narrative. The words we speak in His name have even more power and as we learn in scripture, His word never returns void. Never! We can not always see it, our vision is not broad enough to see the harvest of our words, but it is there.

Our words change minds and hearts, perhaps not the mind and heart of who we are speaking to, but there are always others listening. This is especially true on the internet,this voyeuristic world full of eyes on us that we can’t even see. There are comments, articles, ideas that go back years, forever preserved in cyberspace, still being viewed, still being accessed.

Most head butting, war of words you will lose. “I recognize the vast superiority of your words and have now changed my mind,” said no one on the intertoobz ever, but our words still matter, for good or ill, we have planted them. Sometimes all we have is the idea that I loved you enough to share my words with you,to show you another way, a better way, once actually called The Way, in fact. When it comes to faith we have to remember we are just one small seed and team work is everything. It takes a few hundred thousand seed to plant a crop.

Good words are love. Someone wise once told me, we need to love those who don’t listen all the more, because that might be the only reward they ever have. The epitome of their existence is frozen in one small moment, the inability to receive love. So lay it gently at their feet, dust off your own, and move on.

But never say words don’t have power. We are never as significant nor as insignificant as we imagine ourselves.

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