Tongue

Like every created reality, speech can be a cause for good or ill. St James doesn’t muck around:

How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire. And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness (James 3).

He is quite brutal, don’t you think?

For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

It all seems hopeless, until the first reading strikes our hearts:

The Lord has given me a disciple’s tongue. So that I may know how to reply to the wearied he provides me with speech (Isaiah 50).

No human being can tame the tongue, but God can.

All that is required on our part is a little discipline, rising a little earlier in the morning, which will mean getting to bed a little earlier:

Each morning he wakes me to hear, to listen like a disciple. The Lord has opened my ear.

What better way to prepare for the Easter season of resurrection appearances than by adding this minor disciplinary act.

Amen.