Tending the Sheep Gate
In a day's time, we serve up many things--not just food, for ourselves or others, but words. Think about it.
It is estimated that the average person (who's average?) speaks 60,000 words in a day. Honestly, that seems exhausting; yet we do it day after day. Knowing that many books consist of no more than about 90,000 words, in a week's time, we could have volumes. And what if all of our words were written in a book? Actually, they are. The Bible says that we will give account even for "every idle word."
Just recently when I was preparing to speak at a conference that was sheep themed, I took stock of how my words add up according to what Jesus (my Shepherd) desires them to be. We are the sheep of His pasture, and we control the gate--it's the mouth--and often we aren't good at it. Micah 7:5 admonishes, "Keep the doors of thy mouth." Good advice! Although it seems like an easy task, it isn't. As soon as our feet hit the floor in the morning, we have a challenge--to be sweet or sour, encouraging or discouraging, godly or ungodly--nudging family and friends and strangers either closer to God or pushing them further away from Him.
Proverbs 18:21 reminds us that "Death and life are in the power of the tongue." Some the most famous Bible stories reveal characters who struggled to keep the gate, just as we do. Moses faltered, Miriam murmured, the Israelites complained (many times over), Martha fussed, Peter denied. We're human; that's what we do--default to our humanity.
The people and circumstances that we find unsettling are no doubt part of our sanctification process in becoming more Christlike. As I was typing this blog, my daughter laughed at something she was reading. When I asked, she said: "Even the two oo's in cooperate have their own separate sounds." Even with our different personalities and temperaments, strengths and weaknesses, we have the awesome opportunity to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in tending the gate.
I am reminded of the story in 2 Kings 4, when Elisha entered into Gilgal, he told his servant to gather herbs and set on the great pot to make pottage for the sons of the prophets. Not knowing that some of the herbs were poisonous, someone ate the soup, immediately became ill, and cried out, "There's death in the pot!" Have you ever heard someone say, "Don't stir the pot," in referring to a tense situation?
My husband preached a sermon from this story that I've never forgotten. It was entitled "Death in the Pot." The points were these: Someone supplied it, someone stirred it, someone served it, someone swallowed it, and someone saved it. I encourage you to use these same actions to help every sticky, "wordy" situation in which you find yourself. Supply only good words; don't "stir the pot"; serve up harmful words; don't swallow everything being tossed into a conversation; and save every situation as much as possible, just as Elisha, the prophet of God did. "Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof." We all could use a good lesson in tending the sheep gate, don't you think?
