Are Your Words Pecking Others to Death?
The Woodpecker by Charles E. Burchfield
It's a fine day -- partly cloudy but bright in a wooded glen with pine trees and flowers. But with all this life and beauty there are two dead trees and another one on its way to being dead. Why? A woodpecker is systematically pecking the trees. This continual pecking is causing everything to rattle, vibrate and shake. You can see this in the way the artist has drawn almost wavy halos around each plant and tree. The woodpecker is a small bird shaking this whole forest! Not only that, he's causing death and destruction as seen by two partial trees. AND, the tree he's on is also riddled with holes!
Have you ever known a person that can shake and rattle a whole room of people? Their presence and speech disturb the rest and balance of all that are present. Are you like this woodpecker? Is your speech "seasoned with salt" and providing grace for all the hearers? Or, are you someone that nags and pecks and disturbs the rest of those you live with? If you are, you may be destroying your friends and family just as systematically as the woodpecker is destroying these trees.
For the trees, it is a slow death. One peck after another soon leaves as open wound that never heals. And notice he isn't content to make one hole. You see several. In the same way, a person through their nagging, criticizing, blaming, and sarcasm can produce wound after wound that eventually kills a person. For our friends and family it's also a slow death.
"So the tongue is a little member and boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!" James 3:5