Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
This tiny morsel of Bible wisdom sounds like a fairy tale, but there is invaluable blessing in it. It has reference to personal relations between people of differing personalities and convictions. Once the friendly peace and harmony that you enjoy has been broken, how can genuine peace be restored? Here's the wisdom:
"Do not curse the king, even in your thought; do not curse the rich, even in your bedroom; for a bird of the air may carry your voice, and a bird in flight may tell the matter" (Eccl. 10:20). Don't literalize it by thinking that real birds will hear you gossip about somebody to your wife or husband in total solitude, and fly off to tell it to the person you don't want to hear it.
But there's 100 percent truth in this statement. Even thinking evil of somebody will cause you to betray your own deepest thoughts in your look or your tone of voice; and letting an unhappy or hateful thought escape your lips in words spoken in secret to the one held close will most surely escape somehow and poison your personal relations with the one you have spoken about.
More efficient than a cell phone, secret evil-talking about someone will make its way. The Bible doesn't tell just how the transmission occurs; but it is sure.
No matter how evil a person may appear to you to be, if you can't control your thoughts about him or her, do control your tongue! To say you love somebody and then harbor evil thoughts about him or her is hypocrisy. Do something else in secret or with your closest loved one "in your bedroom": pray for that person.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: August 18, 2004.
Copyright © 2015 by "Dial Daily Bread."
