We were far from home and my husband was the speaker at a Youth Camp for the week. I was about 4 months pregnant and found myself bleeding. We rushed to the tiny regional hospital and it was there I had my first miscarriage. Our hearts were broken. There was no family close by and I was lost in sorrow.
I vividly remember a nurse coming into my hospital room. In trying to comfort me, she began sharing a story about an apple tree and when one of the apples was bad, God cut it off the tree. My reaction to her anecdote was beyond speechless. So God’s purpose is to go around pruning women’s wombs? Whatever her intentions and her view of God, this was not the time for pseudo theological babble to be shared. I just wanted someone to hug me and to share my pain.
Proverbs 15: 2 The tongue of the wise adorns knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly. “Folly” is defined as lack of good sense but it also is a name for a costly ornamental building with no practical purpose. This nurse had an entire theology built on sand by which she thought she solved the problem of pain and loss. Her mouth was gushing but her words were empty.
During that same year my mother died suddenly. An elderly couple came to the funeral and while shaking out hands the husband said, “Oh, we never miss a funeral!” No one in our family was able to identity who the couple was. Could they just have come for the free post-funeral lunch? Regardless, their words took up space and were meaningless. The mouth of the fool is someone who talks just for the sake of airtime. They might as well be talking to the wind because their words have no practical purpose.
Proverbs 15: 2 Knowledge flows like spring water from the wise; fools are leaky faucets, dripping nonsense. (from The Message paraphrase). No one likes to hearing the dripping of a leaky faucet. The battle cry of believers in this time in history should be Psalm 19:14 “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.” May our words be rich with the wisdom of God, filled with the kindness of the Comforter, and come from the Holy Spirit. There are enough dripping faucets and ornamental word follies out there. Praying before we speak is much better than sharing stories of apples coming off the trees. No lives are enriched by hearing “Blah, blah, blah.”
During these unusual times, what is the source of the words that are coming out of your mouth? Are they rich words from God which are spoken with love at the prompting of the Holy Spirit? Or are they meaningless babble that fills air time, but not Spirit time?