"Words can build you up. Words can break you down. Start a fire in your hearts or put it out." -Hawk Nelson, Words
"The words people say to us not only have shelf life but have the ability to shape life.” -Bob Goff, Love Does
"But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like." -James 1:22-24
A couple of weeks ago I was browsing my Newsfeed on Facebook and wouldn't you know, a post caught my eye. There are lots of things that do this: funny quotes, Buzzfeed articles, pictures of dogs with new filters. When hundreds of millions of people are filtering their lives onto their pages, there are bound to be at least a few things that stand out.
This post wasn't one of those things. It was a status of a young man I had an opportunity to meet through a couple summer mission trips. Truth, be told, it was the length that caught my eye. This is a guy who has been known to run off a pretty healthy rant, so something so long had me intrigued. What I read broke my heart: two paragraphs filled with anger, curses and language that makes your hair stand on edge. There was a point and a target of this status, but it's become irrelevant.
The point was much bigger than the one he was trying to make. As communication has gone more and more digital, as our lives play out online more than in the flesh, we've lost the power of words. We blog and tweet. We post statuses and send texts. We have gifs and memes. Words come in abundance and can go to every corner of the world in mere seconds.
But with that has come an overabundance. We pass them around like pennies. While our audiences have gotten bigger our words have gotten smaller. The volume of our words has gone up but their power has gone down. While we type away about what we ate for lunch or about what our roommate is doing there are so many words that we've become oversaturated. And that includes this blog, just more words to fill the web.
But words have incredible power. It may not seem like it when we type them, but "I love you" and "I hate you" still have the ability to give us wings or destroy our days. Words of wisdom can inspire dreams to take flight and words of hate can tear those dreams down. The words we use are incredibly powerful, whether we speak them, put them in a letter or squeeze them into 140 characters on Twitter.
This idea wasn't foreign to the ancient Israelites. When Jacob fooled his father Isaac and gained his blessing in Esau's place, it was more than just a kind word. It was a word of blessing. It couldn't be taken back and given to the older brother after the plot was uncovered. Once the words left Isaac's mouth, Jacob had been blessed.
At the beginning of Genesis, God speaks the world into existence. Just like Isaac's blessing, the words of creation had power. They formed things. They shaped a formless void. They had consequence.
We've lost this somewhere. We've learned that when the world is full of noise and everyone is sharing, we've got to add more and more and get bigger and bigger just to be heard. We've learned to judge the value of words by the number of likes and favorites they receive. And if we don't like them, they can just be deleted.
Movements come and go. Hashtags trend and then vanish. Blog get shared a million times and then disappear. Trendy videos pop up on walls on every continent and then fade into distant memories. There are so many words coming from so many directions it's easy to lose the incredible power they have to stir our souls towards awesome things.
Take this blog for example. At its core, I hope in some small way it blesses those who read it. I hope it inspires people to go do big exciting things and opens people's eyes to the things God is doing in their midst. That's what words can do. Hopefully my words do that in little ways. Hopefully yours do too.
But this is just another blog. It's more words on a screen to help fill up the endless expanse of the internet. It's when words translate into actions that they become truly special. People are drawn to inspiration and wisdom, but they follow actions. We want stories and examples that are worth diving into. If our lives stay at the level of words, then that's all they are. That's why people followed Jesus. He taught. He taught incredible things. Things we're still wrestling with and trying to figure out how to live out today. But the gospel is also full of things Jesus did!
We need to move beyond living our lives through pictures with cool filters. We've got to move past posting about "that moment when...". What if we stopped filling the world with words that are empty and filled it with lives that matter? The world needs lives that make a difference. It needs love that resurrects the dead. And most of all, it needs us to make it. God is calling us and inviting us into that story. And when we start to dive into those kinds of crazy stories, our words suddenly start to seem more significant. They become worth listening to.
So, for this post, this blog is going to be more than a blog. For every person who reads this in the next 48 hours, I'm going to donate $1 (up to $1000) to a cause that is very dear to my heart, giving kids with special needs a chance to attend summer camp at Camp Barnabas. Don't worry. I'm not rich. I don't have oodles of cash. But I do believe that when we throw ourselves into stories God makes impossible things possible. I also believe that while words have intense power, when they speak things into motion they become even more beautiful.
So let's move past words. Let's get past statuses and tweets about things we're passionate and get our hands dirty living into those passions. Let's move past motivational quotes and start living out that motivation. Good intentions and feelings are great, but when they move from ideas to flesh they become something else altogether. They are the seeds that God can grow to change the world. So go do something crazy. Go invite a homeless neighbor out to dinner. Go share a cup of coffee with a stubborn coworker. Put down your iPhone and go live a better story. The world doesn't need another motivational quote or picture of coffee. It needs you. It needs your love and your passion and your energy and your whole self!
And please, use your words to build others up. Let them affirm and support. Let them be the foundations upon which people establish dreams. There are enough words dragging people down these days. My mom used to say, "If you can't think of something nice to say, think harder"...
forever unfinished...
