The challenge for the week was the word Bounce. I thought of basket ball and hopping animals but the thing that really stuck in my head was bouncing checks. Then an old and thoroughly inappropriate saying came to my mind from my distant blurry past. People used to say, “Don’t write a check with your mouth…” I won’t finish it. It’s not appropriate. What usually happened was someone would be getting a little too arrogant and insulting and decided to take it out on someone who could beat them to a miserable pulp. The sentiment really comes down to this, “watch your mouth! What you say can and will be used against you in the form of physical violence.”
Certainly I’m not an advocate of physical violence nor am I a fan of arrogant and demeaning speech. Neither is God. In James 3:5 and 6, we read, “5 Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” It’s true. Your mouth can create huge problems, so be really careful what you say.
Earlier in the passage James 3:2, we get a pretty nice antidote, “If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.”
What kind of “checks” are you writing? What would happen if one bounced?
