Words Can Haunt!
Brian R. Kenyon

A few Halloweens ago, I sat in my driveway to give candy to the "trick or treaters." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw what appeared to be a toy bat fly out of my neighbors' front door. About ten minutes later, I learned that it was my neighbors' very expensive macaw bird that had escaped. My neighbors frantically searched for their bird. Unfortunately, for the decent folks of the neighborhood, these neighbors taught their bird how to cuss. In back of our houses were citrus groves. Thus, the neighbors who lost the bird walked through the groves calling out the cuss words that they taught the bird, hoping it would cuss back at them.

The lesson is this: We must seriously consider the words we use and teach others, even a bird! I am sure my neighbors never thought the words they taught their bird would come back to haunt them, but what else could they have done? Give up on a very expensive bird? Cuss at the groves? Either way, they were trapped. To my knowledge, they still never found the bird.

The wise man said, "A fool's mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul" (Pr. 18:7). Again, "the lips of a fool will swallow up himself" (Eccl. 10:12). Jesus said that "every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned" (Mt. 12:36-37). Are there situations, maybe even "birds," in our lives that will bring our words back to haunt us? May all our words be "fitly spoken" (Pr. 25:11).