Mr. Decker’s Blog

I was reading in my Bible this morning, and it struck me that so much of what was written there was meant to ENCOURAGE the reader. I happened to be going through one of Paul’s letters to the people in Corinth, and he was really trying to build them up – you know, the self esteem thing. He was telling them that he was proud, he was referring to their guaranteed good future… he went all out to make them feel good about who they were.

And then, I thought about what I read on the writings of the internet… the empty chatter of the IM world… the meaningless forwarding of email junk… the mind mushing matter of the myspace messages (yes, I have a myspace place) and I thought how much of a waste most words have become. Instead of bringing encouragement and benefit – language has dissolved into a way to kill time. Read the latest messages sent along the messaging mainstream and see if you feel encouraged.

Words are power. We all possess that power and can use it for destruction, or peace… criticism or blessing. Our choices are on the screen in front of us. Some of you teenagers who hit this space are gifted writers… but you aren’t giving away any presents to others. Some of us adults can’t recall the last time we read a good book (how about the Good-est one?) or received a handwritten letter from an old friend.

Technology is great… speed is helpful… but there is no way to shortcut a compliment… or an encouraging message. It takes time… and thought. Old Paul put a lot of it into his words… and here I am – still reading them 2,000 years later. If someone read your myspace comments in a couple of thousand years, would they feel like they missed out on something in not having known you? Would your words make them want to dig deeper and discover who you were?

Just a thought that I was thinking…

This entry was posted on Friday, October 20th, 2006 at 10:32 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.