Words, words, words

My life has become one big running journal.  I wake up in the morning wondering what I'm going to write about in my devotional blog.  Things happen to me and I formulate how I will write the story in my head.  I jot down lists at work, update blogs at home, and scribble notes to myself all day long.  Part of me loves it.  I love writing down my thoughts, preserving them for posterity, knowing that my thoughts and experiences will be remembered long after they leave my own memory.

But the other part of me wonders if they're worth being remembered.  Am I saying something that matters?  Something that will truly affect people?  Something that makes a difference?  Or am I just wasting peoples' time - including my own?  To quote the Bard, am I just spewing "words, words, words?" 

I still don't know what I want to do with my life.  But I do know for a fact that I want to live a life of significance.  I want to do something worth doing with my life.  The Bible says that many words mark the speech of a fool.  So when you have something to say, make sure that it's worth saying.  Don't just spew words out.  Make them count.

Ecclesiastes 5:1-3

¹ Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. 

Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, 

who do not know that they do wrong.

 ² Do not be quick with your mouth,
   do not be hasty in your heart
   to utter anything before God.
God is in heaven
   and you are on earth,
   so let your words be few.
³ A dream comes when there are many cares,
   and many words mark the speech of a fool.

Stand in awe

I think that so often, it's really easy to read stories in the Bible and put them characters in them on a pedestal.  "They were so much holier than I am," we think.  "Trusting in and following God must have been so easy, so simple for them."  That's why I like the book of Ecclesiastes.  It reminds me that the people in the Bible were just as human as I am.

The majority of the book of Ecclesiastes is a pretty depressing book.  The headlines in my Bible read something like this: Everything is meaningless....Wisdom is meaningless...pleasures are meaningless...wisdom and folly are meaningless...toil is meaningless...advancement is meaningless...riches are meaningless...oppression, toil, friendlessness....I think you see the common theme here.

The cool thing to me, though, is that this book is still in the Bible.  God doesn't want us to mask our feelings.  He wants to know how we really feel; He'd rather us be honest than pretend to think something that we really don't.  God doesn't want an army of little robots who are programmed to worship Him; He wants sincerity, both the good AND the bad emotions.

So then all of a sudden, after all of this depression, there is a break in the gloom.  It's as if the author has just woken up and realized Who his God really is.  He has stopped his morose philosophical ramblings just long enough to understand how big, how amazing, how purely awe-inspiring his God really is.

Does the thought of God provoke you to think more about the words that you utter, to consider more carefully the places that your feet take you, to focus your dreams on His goals rather than yours?  Does the thought of God make you stand in awe of Him?  I hope it does.  He is surely an awe-inspiring God.

Ecclesiastes 5:4-7

 ⁴ When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. ⁵ It is better not to make a vow than to make one and not fulfill it. ⁶ Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. And do not protest to the temple messenger, “My vow was a mistake.” Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands? ⁷ Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore stand in awe of God.