pondering words

This is how much of a geek I really am. I think about stuff like this while I'm mowing the lawn. Which, by the way, is one of my very favorite things to do. Gets me outdoors. Gets the sweat going so that I know I've really DONE something. And gives me a chance to drown out all other noise and be alone with my thoughts. Which is usually music (anything from Mumford and Sons to Lady Gaga to Gungor) but tonight my thoughts got moving along a particular path: words.

I won't look up chapter and verse right now because frankly I don't feel like it (gonna down this Woodchuck Hard Cider: Summer - which is AMAZINGLY quenching by the way - YUM, then take a bath). Just jotting my thoughts down, not doing that hard-work-research tonight. That'll be for another time.

Words.

All this started with Mumford and Sons in my earbuds singing, "Can you kneel before the King and say I'm clean?" (white blank page)

That got me to thinking about Isaiah before God in Heaven, saying "I am a man of unclean lips" and the angel laying a hot coal (or something) on his mouth. Funny to me that the thing he'd be most concerned about is his lips, and how purifying those made him okay to be in the presence of God. Hmm....

Then I thought about how weird it is in Revelation that the "sword" comes out of Jesus' mouth. Anyone but me and my friend Bill think maybe that could be a metaphor for words rather than a sci-fi-worthy image of a blood bath?

Then I thought about James (and I'm pretty sure Solomon or whoever wrote those particular Proverbs, too) said that the power of life and death are in the tongue, and that it would be easier to tame a wild mustang than the tongue (paraphrase mine).

And then I thought again about Jesus, this time how He said that if we don't confess Him with our mouth that He won't remember us to His Father (or something close to that).

And then I thought about how He said, "From the heart the mouth speaks".

I could go on and on ...

There's something much more powerful and relevant going on than whether or not I say "dammit", in these verses. To reduce such scripture to something as menial as cussing or even gossiping is a gross exercise in missing the point, I'm guessing.

So I wonder what that point is?

Does it have anything to do with the verse that teaches us, "Anyone who says Christ is Lord does so by the power of the Holy Spirit?" and if so, how does that inform our reading of the promise that "Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord?"

hmm.... I wonder.