Words, Words, Words

Litte children have been heard on the playground chanting, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me!" It is usually quite the opposite ... the school yard bully has used words to hurt them badly.

Words are the currency of our society. The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use. The Bible contains 774,746 words ... 593,493 in the Old Testament and 181,253 in the New.

Blind and deaf from the age of 19 months, Helen Keller could neither hear nor see a word but used them to great effect writing a total of 12 published books and several articles. With the help of her profound faith, she transformed her life into one lived in service of the Good.

"The Bible gives me a deep, comforting sense that things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal," she said.

It was God, Himself, who used His Word to the greatest effect. If you take time to read the first chapter of Genesis, you will find that it was with His WORD that He created everything!

David penned these words in Psalm 33:6: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made ..." Again in verse 9: "For He spoke, and it was done ..."

Isaiah stated: "The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our god stands forever." (40:8)

John starts his book with these words: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

In the book of Proverbs, there are 35 statements that admonish the use of the mouth, from whence pours out words. God realized the power of words when He inspired Solomon to write: "The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked." (Proverbs 10:11).

But, it is John who gives us the understanding of the greatest power of the word when he quotes Jesus in John 5:24-25: "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from life to death."

That is the ultimate power of words!

The little children may have been wrong in their chant ... words can hurt us. However, the good news is that words, the wonderfully inspired Words of the Bible can also give us life, in its fullest and everlasting.

That is the Good Word!

Larry Abele - Editorial Team