March 4th…“DO YOU HAVE A GOOD STORY ABOUT YOURSELF SWEARING OR CUSSING?”
Do you mean those adverse, antisocial adjectives arranged aggregately in acrid aim at anyone and anything? Ohhhhh…….THOSE….hehehe 😉 Well, my dear ones, I’m of the opinion that there can never be a “good” story about swearing or cussing. Yet, alas, like many a youngster growing up, I DID indulge in that lesser character trait from time to time. Guilty was I for burdening the air around me with, let’s say, an UNwise choice of words.
On such occasions, our dear mother employed Proverbs 22:6 (“Train up a child in the way he should go……) by her stern chastisement to me in the form of three terse words, “SHAME ON YA!!!”. The chilled reverberations of her words in my ears would make me feel like less that 2 cents really quick.
Have you ever filled a bucket with sloppy mud? If you tipped that bucket upside down, did sparkling spring water come out……….noooo, I didn’t think so….you got out of that bucket exactly what you put INTO it. To this very day, I’m STILL learning the correlation that what I pour into the “bucket of my mind and heart” is equal to what I pour out of my mouth and into the world around me. By drinking in the crystal clear spring water of God’s Word, that equates to pouring out the same clean flow to be a blessing to those around me. On the contrary, if I ingest the “mud” of anger, selfishness, envy and worse, then I’ll sadly pour out the sludge of negative language that will then infect those around me.
During my years as a Grade School Custodian, I made it my focus to control my tongue around the little darlings that attended that school each day. I wanted to “teach”, in my own way, a positive role model in how I acted and reacted to my life around the students. Sometimes I would be out on the playground working on a piece of equipment and would injure myself. In response to my pain, rather than turn the air “blue” with foul language, I’d purposefully say something silly like, “Ohhh busted baby booger bubbles!!” orrrr “Oooooo, that tickled!!” The little sweethearts around me would giggle and laugh at what I just said while in pain. I figured it was much better to create laughter in the children than have them covering their ears in shock and being wounded by ugly words and my lack of sensitivity. I’m not perfect by a long shot, but such is one of the good goals of this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.
Norwegian Farmer's Son 