Thought for the Week: The true meaning of words that matter to us all

One instance in the life of the acclaimed English novelist Sir Henry Rider Haggard will suffice in this instance. After a six-week writing marathon, Haggard finished his novel ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ and was seeking a publisher. Sitting in a publisher’s office, several options were outlined to Haggard. The publisher wanted to buy the novel’s rights outright with money to be offered to the writer that day.

This option appealed to Haggard as he was hoping to live by his pen. The second option was that when sales increased the writer would get his cut, with no guarantee there would be many sales. The publisher left the room to attend to a small matter and, from the back of the office, a clerk quietly said: “I would, if I were you, take option two”. Haggard accepted the dream ticket. He lived off the great royalties of that book for years. A word fitly spoken!

All with teaching roles in our fellowships dealing with words have so many opportunities to communicate life transforming words, and such roles ought to be taken casually for life and death are of the words we glibly declare. After, all Jesus, warned us that every idle word will be judged on that ‘Great Day’.

It is important to note, that according to the New Testament, the first word Saul of Tarsus heard from the prophet Ananias after his life-changing encounter on the Damascus Road was this simple word - ‘Brother’. It was a word the Apostle Paul would recall and write about in years to come.

Ananias, never mentioned in the New Testament again, did his work and enriched the church of Jesus Christ with that one word. Here is ministry and a challenge facing us all.

Peter, sitting in the courtyard during the trial of Jesus, was confronted by a servant girl, who put him on the spot. She said: “Your accent gives you away”. It is ever so and our Lord said: “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (St Luke 6, verse 45).

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