“OPEN MOUTH, INSERT FOOT!”

 

DISCUSSION:                   

            We have all done it! Some of us more than others, but we have all done it; opened our mouth and said something we wish we hadn’t.  The millisecond it rolls off of our tongue, we wish we could reel it back in.  Then in the following moments we feel embarrassed and humiliated.  Imagine if you had done that to God and then God called you on it.  Within our readings, we have an example of just that!  Job had wanted to be able to have an opportunity to defend himself. He wanted an answer from God as to why all of this was happening, and boy did he get it.  After hearing those words “Where were you…? Job realized he had opened his mouth and inserted his foot.  Listen to his words in Job 42.3, “I have uttered what I did not understand.”  Whether it was Adam in the Garden of Eden or Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane, we can all relate to uttering things we do not understand.  Knowing that this is a common problem, how can we cease such behavior?  James writes “let us be swift to hear, slow to speak and slow to wrath” (James 1.19). We haven’t been doing this because we are too busy being “swift to speak and slow to hear”.  Because of our human nature, total avoidance of doing this is not possible.  It’s like what the media says about basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain; you cannot beat him, you can only hope to contain him. This is something that will always be an issue for us, but the more we listen, the less likely we will open our mouth and insert foot.

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