Back in my earlier days when we had no air conditioning in the summer and used wood or coal stoves for heat during the winter blusters, my grandpa had a grocery store. It was oblong; maybe 30' x 90'. The 8' meat display case was toward the back. A 5' circular butcher block was the focus of many a chicken being dissected at my junior and senior-high hands. Flies were a problem in the summer so we used Fly Ribbon; a tube about the size of a roll of pennies and when unfurled became a two foot yellow sticky ribbon hanging from the ceiling. Flies would draw to the ribbon and become forever stuck. Flies hanging above the meat? Gross today....a way of life back then.
What do you do with those little pests which keep landing on your ears. You swat at them and they land nearby; only to attack from another angle. I'm not referring to flies; but to injurious words which are abruptly served with intent to ruin our day. What do you do with comments good for nothing but stalling your efforts. You know how they linger. You rehearse some of them. You memorize some of them. You can envision the facial expression as they were fired your direction.
What do we do with these pesky little day ruiners? We hang "word ribbon" from the ceiling and snag the little critters. We keep them from landing on our ears and entering our hearts. We will disregard them as they come from dark forces. We will focus on the excellent, the lovely, the worthy of praise (Phil. 4:8), but not on statements intended to shut us down.
When Paul wrote, ...taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one...he was including torturous words hurled like grenades in effort to take us soldiers out. Lift your shield. Hang your "bad-word" ribbon. Stop the incoming pests. Refuse to provide them storehouse. They don't belong to you. Don't accumulate them with interest. Hang the ribbon to snare the day ruiners. You do not have to accept delivery. You didn't order them.
You are not the word-ribbon so quit your practice of letting ill-spoken, unfaithful words stick to your eardrums. They are intended only to ruin your day. We are the ones responsible to throw up our ribbon in defense of these pesky incoming missiles. Brighten up. Lighten up. Silly and belittling talk doesn't have to be taken in.
Praise God! Praise your colleagues! Praise your moment! The word-ribbons are flying. The pesky little day ruiners shall not get their chance at delaying our walk into wonder!
3 comments:
Good memories. Good thoughts. In the south, when we would go to buy some bar-b-que, we'd look for the little shack-style BBQ pit and then check the health rating. If the rating was an A, we'd keep looking. If a B, the BBQ was okay. C or lower and you got the best BBQ ... and ignore the flies. Can't explain it, but with a low health rating and flies, the BBQ was DELICIOUS! Now enjoy your lunch.
My grandfather used to work at a meat locker when I was little. He used to let us go back in the back and run around through the hanging meat. Oh the memories :)
Thanks for your encouragement about words. It is so easy to absorb them and let them ruin our day. Thanks for the reminder that even though we don't get a choice when someone says them, we do have a choice in what we do with them. Thanks for the flying word ribbons!
Wll, that was definitely cheerful. I'm too young to remember hanging meat and fly strips.
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