“Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, 

but only what is useful for building up…”

–Ephesians 4:29a 

It’s been cold. As I write these words, we have just concluded a week in Southeast Pennsylvania with multiple days of single-digit temperatures. We just had our first significant snowfall, too.  While I enjoy the change of seasons, it’s usually about this time of the year that I need a break from the sweaters and hats and ice scrapers. Often that longing results in Lori and me traveling to some warm place for a brief escape.  This year, we will head to Florida where the forecast temperatures each day of our trip will be in the 60s. We’re ready! 

A number of years ago I was in San Diego during late February. I had travelled there as part of work on a denominational committee, but the journey also provided respite from the cold. The day after the meeting ended, I was standing outside the hotel waiting for the shuttle to the airport. The pick-up area was a circular driveway cut into the building which meant that other than the entrance and exit, the space was enclosed.  Sound inside it travelled well. 

There was one other person waiting there, an older man on a bench using his cell phone. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but without anyone else present, his words reverberated. He was using FaceTime. I pieced together that he was a physician in town for a meeting, too. The people on the other end were his granddaughters who I am guessing were about 8 and 10 years of age.

It was such a sweet conversation. The girls lived on the east coast and he first asked them about their recent snow. He told them he was in California. “Do you know where that is?” He queried them about a recent ski trip their family had made. He shared that their grandmother and he were too old to ski, but would love to join them on some future trip as lodge buddies. This grandfather was interested in what they were eating for breakfast and when a colleague walked up he introduced him to the girls, too. I truly heard the whole conversation! 

The greatest moment came when he was winding down the call. “I want you to lean close to the phone,” he said “because I have a secret.” Little did he know that an eavesdropping pastor from Pennsylvania was about to hear his classified message or that I would be sharing it with all of you in a blog years later. When the girls had pulled their faces near to the screen he whispered “Gramps thinks the two of you are spectacular!”  

The right words make all the difference, don’t they? It isn’t just traveling grandparents who have such an impact. A friend who listens closely to our doubts and then responds “You can do this!” The supervisor who stops by your desk just to say “You did an amazing job on that presentation!” A teacher who adds a note in the margins to the graded essay reading “Well done!”  All of those persons, too, reveal that encouraging messages feed the soul. 

The Apostle Paul called for such responses in the verse cited above.  It comes from a chapter when he is urging the believers in Ephesus to model a new kind of lifestyle as Christians. He offers a laundry list of things they should do–speaking the truth, “be angry, but do not sin,” work honestly, share with those in need, and more. 

In the middle of those instructions he says this: “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up.”  Clearly Paul knew what we understand, too, that encouraging words are not the only type that are spoken. Instead human utterances then and now can also discourage and stifle creativity, demean and belittle. When you add to such timeless realities the 21st century challenge of anonymous and vicious social media posts it’s a given that evil talk did not end with the first century.

I suspect it won’t stop in our era either, but we can strive to model a different choice even so. “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up,” Paul said “as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.”  More succinctly, I hear him encouraging each us to think of one person in our life today for whom the words fit and then say to her or him “I think you’re spectacular!” 

My words matter, Lord. Help me to use them in ways that always build up the other.  Amen.