by Bryan J. Neva, Sr.
What are words? They're just sound waves that travel through the air, they make vibrations on your eardrum, and are processed in your brain. Words cannot even hurt a stone. Words can only hurt you if you let them!
If you're innocent and don't deserve someone's unkind words or rebukes, don't let it bother you, don't respond in kind, just don't say anything. But if you are guilty, use it as an opportunity to make amends with others.
If you're too eager to please others and want to be liked, or if you resent being corrected for your faults and give excuses, then the words others say will hurt you because you don't want to be despised by others. This is just silly human pride. It's impossible to please everyone, so don't even try. Rather, strive to be humble of heart and just try to please God.
When you dread being abased and humiliated for your faults, it's clear that you are not truly humble. The reason people criticize others for their faults is because they are full of self-righteousness and human pride. They look at the speck in another's eye, but don't see the log in their own eye. Don't be like them. Don't judge other's weaknesses. Don't even judge your own weaknesses. God knows all our human weaknesses and faults better than we do. He is the judge and discerner of all secrets. So let Him be the judge, and ignore what others say to you or about you! Human judgement is often erroneous, but God's judgement is always true.
Even if all the evils, which the worst human malice can invent, were said about you, what harm can they possibly do you if you pay no attention to them? They cannot take so much as one hair from your head.
God knows how everything is done in the world, and He knows both the one who inflicts injury as well as the one to whom it afflicts. Nothing happens in life without God's permission. (This is a great mystery which theologians have pondered for thousands of years, but it's quite true.) God will judge each one of us according to the words we've spoken and the deeds we have done. So if you put your efforts into just trying to please God and not others, then the words said to you or the deeds done to you won't bother you one bit.
