Good morning and happy Saturday. It is hard to believe that one week ago was Easter weekend. God blessed us with wonderful services on Friday night, Sunday morning and Sunday evening. It was incredible to see how God worked in our midst. We praise God for what He has done and continues to do in and through His church.
The week prior to Easter I was contacting people to invite them to church. For some, I was texting them our picture that showed when our Easter services would be. Most people ignored it, a few acknowledged it, a couple shared why they couldn’t come. However, one response I received was hilarious. Shortly after I sent the picture and a text inviting someone, I received a rather unexpected response. It said, “I’m on lunch now babe I love you.” That was followed by a winky kissy face and a big red heart. As I said, that was unexpected. The person soon realized what they had done and texted to say that was meant for his girlfriend. I had assumed that was the case but was relieved to get the clarification. Anyway, we had a good laugh over that. In the modern era, that happens quite frequently. If you have ever used the talk to text feature, then you probably have inadvertently texted words you didn’t want. In the same way, we often blame spellcheck for email mishaps. I had a friend use the talk to text and ended up sending a curse word by mistake. He was very embarrassed when he found out what he had sent to his pastor. I know that I thought it was much funnier than he did. Sadly, I have also received texts and emails from people that used curse words intentionally, but we will save that for a future rambling.
One thing that we all need to be careful of is what and how we communicate. In the story above, he simply sent it to the wrong person. It wasn’t a big deal at all. Unfortunately, it has become very common for people just to fire off texts, tweets, posts, and emails without stopping to think about it. Recently I was saddened as a person made post after post ripping other people, using foul language, and writing all sorts of derogatory things. And when that wasn’t going on, they were posting the verse of the day and extoling the virtues of the Christian life. What in the world? How is seeing all of that interspersed actually going to inspire anyone to want to become a Christian? The apostle James said it well when he wrote, “8 but no one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With the tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in God’s likeness. 10 Blessing and cursing come out of the same mouth. My brothers and sisters, these things should not be this way” (James 3:8-10).
James gave further advice that can help us in all of our communication, whether it be verbally or otherwise. In James 1:19-20, he wrote, “19 My dear brothers and sisters, understand this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, 20 for human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness” (James 1:19-20). Maybe in the times in which we live, we can learn to be “quick to listen, slow to speak” (text, post, tweet, email, etc.) and slow to anger. Maybe in doing so, we can be more effective in our witness for the cause of Christ and also spend less time trying to repair relationships and fix problems.
From our neighborhoods to the nations,
Pastor Larry
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