There are vests to protect vital organs from bullets.
Unfortunately, there is nothing to protect you from words. Words, despite their invisible state, can cut through, and permeate where nothing else can.
Words can be not only damaging, but also virus-like, spreading throughout your thoughts, and impacting your mood and, eventually- your health.
Words, echoing over and over, fueling themselves, manifesting, invading. Attacking. Spreading.
There is no vaccine to protect you from the virus like words some people choose to spread.
There is no disinfectant for words, no antidote, no antibiotic. Once they are spoken, once they are heard, they are there. You’re infected.
What words are infecting you today?
Lies? Gossip? Rumors?
They may not be infecting you, but are they affecting you?
It’s hard when the knife land in your back. It’s not like a splinter on your finger that’s accessible and removable. It’s unreachable.
When your back has a scratch that’s unreachable, you find someone that will scratch it.
When your back has a knife in it, who will pull it out?
Only you.
The unreachable spot that knife landed can only be removed by the victim. The attacker cannot retrieve the weapon of words once they are spoken, and the counsel of others will do no good. You have to stretch, reach, and pull. You have to get uncomfortable to feel comfort again.
Stretch: Stretch your mind to open up to the attacker: They say “hurt people = hurt people”. Open your mind to the possible reasons this knife was placed…show compassion.
Light shines in the darkness for the godly. They are generous, compassionate, and righteous.Psalm 112:4
Reach: Reach out to the attacker… and inward, within your heart. Reach for inner mercy, grasp it, and show it.
This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Zechariah 7:9
Don’t speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters. If you criticize and judge each other, then you are criticizing and judging God’s law. But your job is to obey the law, not to judge whether it applies to you. James 4:11
