Wake, feel your worth, O my soul
Speak the word, the word that can save us all
Awed by grace, I fall on my face
And scream the word that can save us all.-Thrice, Stand and Feel Your Worth
“Y’know usually you come up with pretty good things to say but don’t do any more of that care bear **** alright?”
That’s what he said to me the day I decided to say what needed to be said. I was a safety representative for my job in a modular manufacturing plant and in our pre-workday meetings I would often be called upon for a “safety moment”. The idea was that every day I would draw to attention something for our interior finishing department to keep an eye out for our own safety and those of our co-workers. To care for each other’s best interest.
What I had noticed was that many of my co-worker’s first instinct early in the day was to interact in a cajoling, playfully insulting way, and that was how these men got along with each other. Some were more aggressive and abrasive than others but generally, this was how the day went.
But I also knew that a young man in our department had just lost his father to cancer.
When you work in close proximity to other groups and trades all day and everyone has a job to do sometimes things can get heated, so I decided to make a point of that as my safety moment for the day. I encouraged them to find out what kind of day their co-workers were having before assuming that there could be a no holds barred session of insult and criticism and in that way maybe reduce the amount of disagreements and arguments in the workplace. That was it. Just a little consideration in case you happen to meet someone on the worst day of their life, and the first and maybe only thing you do to them is to tear them down further.
That wasn’t the only comment I received in response to my safety moment but the rest were much the same.
That was the day I started to realize that it doesn’t matter what people will say or do, they need to know the truth. Words have so much more power than we think they do sometimes. The closer in relationship you are to someone the more power they hold. My wife, for example, knows everything she could say that would rend my heart and soul to pieces. But she also knows the things that can set me up on mountain tops of self-confidence and assurance.
I used to say things like “The way guys know if they’re friends is if they can insult each other.” But I don’t believe that anymore. I used to, but I no longer think that is the best way even for men to relate. For the last ten years the phrases “Speak the true word.” and “Speak glorious truths.” have often come to my mind and I’ve spent countless hours trying to consider what that looks like.
Ephesians 4:29-32 says:
29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
I believe our words change things. What we call down on others can be loosed in heaven. Our words can cause eternal activity, things that change the course of history, and I don’t want to waste time with anything that will damage for a day, much less till the end of days.
To you, reader, I want you to be encouraged, built up, loved, assured, made whole, made new, and restored. If I have to correct or rebuke I want to speak the truth in love. I don’t want to divide. I will continue (if I have truly yet begun) to be the bleeding heart. The mocked one. To be turned aside and dismissed as caring too much, as I once accused others of doing. And I regret every moment I could have told someone that I loved them when they needed to hear it, to love someone enough to say something that might destroy our friendship but restore their soul! There are such times, may they be few for you.
I remember what C.S. Lewis says about being a writer and a dreamer is that I may often imagine being a better person so vividly that I may convince others I am that person when I describe them and convince even myself. I don’t want to do that. But I think right now that I will be content to be reviled and cast out, all for standing out in the fringe, in the desert, calling out to any who would listen:
“True joy is offered to you, and it is offered freely! I love you because God himself loves you so incorruptibly! Strike me if you must but accept His forgiveness! Hate me but love HIM! Trust that he is good! Know that he is true! Don’t look at me but look at the one who saves, who transforms, He takes away the sins of the world!”
To put to death each day the desire to see the creation as precious in itself, and to consider every person, every desire, every good thing in a 10,000-year view; these are the desires of my heart. So that in the very moment that eternity hangs in the balance, I will speak the true word.
Lord let it be so.