Words and work

Apparently one in seven of the Proverbs relate to words. What we say is of great importance. This was a great sermon on the idea last week. In it Paul Dale dismisses the childhood defence “sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me”, because the truth is that words can do a lot more damage than sticks and stones. I’m not convinced that “actions speak louder than words” is altogether true either. If the two conflict, a person has no choice but to hold to the words, and you won’t undo damaging words with actions alone.

I’m loving this sermon series on the Proverbs. Last night’s was on work (the sermons are mostly based on one chapter, but pull in other related proverbs from the rest of the book), including the idea that in biblical terms our “work” includes not just our paid work, but our home work, our relational work, our kingdom work etc (and he does compartmentalise life a little here, but I think he's doing that deliberately so that people won't only think of their "paid" work), and with it the possibility that you can be a workaholic in one area, but a “sluggard” in another (and that there's a sluggard somewhere in all of us). If you’re interested you’ll be able to listen to it sometime soon also.