July 4th

He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity.
Proverbs 21:23

We find that the tongue is the instigator of many of our troubles. The mouth helps to guard the tongue. When we open our mouths to talk, the tongue is loosened and free to speak blessing or curse. In doing so, we also bring blessing or curse on our self by the words that we speak. I have lost count of the times I have spoken something and thought, “Words come back.” Alas, once spoken, words can never return. This is one reason why we need to think carefully before we speak because words have so much power to affect our lives.

When we guard our words carefully, this means we must also cultivate our thoughts carefully. Thoughts can be like fruit trees that produce fruit and life or weeds that choke the life out of others.

Our spoken words and actions can equally provoke other people to anger and fear. Anger and fear invite storms of trouble and even calamity upon us. This probably would have never happened if we had guarded our thoughts appropriately and kept our mouth closed.