The Power of Speech; Genesis 11

May the mumbling commence!

Don’t believe in the power of speech (the power of DABAR in Hebrew)?  Read this passage from Genesis chapter eleven from a slightly different perspective:

They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.”  They used bricks instead of stone, and tar for mortar.  Then they said, “Come let us make ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the earth.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building.  The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.  Come let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.  That is why it was called Babel – because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world.  From there the Lord scattered the over the face of the earth. (Verses 3-9)

Here we see the power of speech, particularly speech that is understood.  Here is the power of communication and cooperation.  Think the might of war is destructive (or perhaps some think the might of war is constructive)?  War and force have nothing on communication and cooperation.  Communication and cooperation take time, but they can accomplish things that power and coercion cannot.

In the midst of our society, communication and cooperation are becoming rarer and rarer.  What a witness they would be!  Can you and I, as Christians, communicate and cooperate with one another?  The obstacles are huge even when we think of only one language being dominant.  How many times have you spoke your mind only to be misunderstood?  Probably too many times to count!  Sometimes we use the same words with entirely different definitions.  Sometimes we use words that we have no idea what they really mean.  No wonder communication even within one language is so difficult!

But suppose we could make ourselves understood.  Suppose we could communicate and cooperate.  What would we do?  Would we be like the people of Babel?  Would we try to make a name for ourselves and stay in the places where we feel most comfortable?  Or would we choose to leave the comfortable behind and follow the call of God?  Would we choose to make a name for our God rather than ourselves?

So, what are we waiting for?!?  Let’s speak.  Let’s listen.  That last statement bears repeating.  Let’s listen.  God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason – so that we might listen twice as much as we speak.  As we listen to one another, let us ask questions of clarification of one another.  Let’s restate what we hear the other person saying.  These are a couple of ways that we can try to assure that communication can happen and that cooperation will have a fighting chance.

No more bludgeons or bombs!  No more missiles or massacres!  No more automatic weapons or awful mass shootings – like the one that happened a little over a year ago in Arizona.  We have stronger weapons that the Lord grants us when we seek to bring renown to His name rather than to our own.  We have the spoken word and ears open for active listening.  Nothing will be impossible for us, because, when we do these things, we are walking with the Lord.  While we stand with the Lord, nothing will be impossible, because nothing is impossible for the Lord.

Enough mumbling for now…

Peace Out