Talking Less, Saying More

Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips.

Psalm 141:3

A recent trend in medicine suggests that a key factor in increasing human lifespan is calorie reduction—simply eating less food. This goes beyond the obvious application for reducing the growing obesity epidemic. Instead, researchers have found that the less processing of food the body is asked to do, the fewer negative side effects that lead to aging or premature death. It’s sort of like your car—the fewer hours the engine runs, the longer it will last.

The same principle applies to speech: the fewer words we speak, the less chance we have of saying something hurtful that we will regret. Proverbs 10:19 establishes this principle by warning against a “multitude of words,” and the apostle James says the same thing in a different way by exhorting us to be “slow to speak” (James 1:19). We live in a world where the air is filled with words—radio, television, the Internet. Finding a person who is “slow to speak” is rare. But we should be that kind of person—one who “restrains his lips” (Proverbs 10:19).

The next time you have the opportunity to speak, measure your words.

A sanctified heart is better than a silver tongue.

THOMAS BROOKS