Bending the Tongue

 

Monday, May 30, 2022

“My people bend their tongues like bows to shoot out lies. They refuse to stand up for the truth. They only go from bad to worse. They do not know me,” says the Lord.  Jeremiah 9:3

And among all the parts of the body, the tongue is a flame of fire.  It is a whole world of wickedness, corrupting your entire body.  It can set your whole life on fire, for it is set on fire by hell itself.  James 3:6

I’ve got a lawnmower with a very sharp blade.  Actually there are 3 blades that spin like Hosea’s whirlwind.[1]  They cut the grass into clippings.  Then they cut it again…and again, before spitting them out on the sidewalk.  If you pick up a handful you’ll notice there are many different sizes of these clippings.  

It owes to several factors:  how many times the grass blade has been cut by the mower blade, how long the grass was growing, and the angle at which the mower approached the blade.  There may be other factors, which I’ve not considered, perhaps many.  But this one thing is certain:  That sharp blade can cut a lot of grass from ANY angle!

The same can be said of the tongue.  Like James’ description of a sharp tongue as a wildfire from hell, setting your world on fire, so the tongue cuts whatever’s in front of it, mowing down the landscape of humanity.  God sent Jeremiah to warn Jerusalem’s population of what their lying tongues were accomplishing.

Bending the tongue is my favorite phrase for crooked speech, or lying.  Small or large, white, gray, or midnight dark, lies are falsehood that cut things (mostly people) into all sorts of discardable waste.  There are many different categories to which you can sort lies, except one:  HELPFUL.  This is because lies separate people from truth.  And when a crooked tongue bends the truth, it immediately sets up an unhelpful barrier between the liar, and the one to which the lie is spoken. 

For instance, I can say a lie to a friend to get off the hook:  I had a headache last night; that’s why I didn’t call you, sorry.  The friend not only buys it, but feels sorry for me.  I’ve bought three seconds of compassion from my friend, when I really rather deserved a sharp look for not calling when I’d promised to do so. And I didn’t call, because I got an opportunity to be with another “better” friend.  At this point, I’ve got to enlist the “better” friend’s help to support my lie, by never mentioning it to the friend to which I told the lie.  Then, I’ve got to write myself a memo to remember the lie, so I don’t get caught talking to him about the good time with the other friend.  And so-on, and so-on.  That mower blade just keeps on cutting…and relationships will lie like shredded grass on the sidewalk before long.  As Jeremiah put it, things go from bad to worse.

That’s the way of all lies.

For You Today

Tell the truth.  You don’t have to keep track of it, worry about it, bend your tongue to reach it, or ever regret it.

There, isn’t that better?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road with Jesus; have a blessed day!  

[1] Images:  Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] Hosea 8:6-8