Magic Spelling

We are living in the golden age of communication. If we are seized by a notion we wish to share, within three minutes we can have it published worldwide, effortlessly and for free. It’s an incredible privilege never before afforded the human race, but instead of being awed by our power to communicate ideas with one another, we’ve lost our respect for it. We steadily spew our thoughts and opinions worldwide in real-time, as if afraid that if we are silent for even a moment, we will be forgotten and cease to exist. We speak thoughtlessly and too soon because in our hearts we believe words are just words, that talk is cheap, that words can never hurt us. You can always apologize later.

We are wrong. We’ve forgotten what our ancestors knew when they spoke of the act of writing as spelling, a word connected with the one they used for magical incantation. They understood the power a word carries with it when it enters the world: it is heard and has effect, a literal blessing or a literal curse.

A word spoken is spoken forever; a word written is even more so, a hard lesson the internet has been teaching us all. When we give our words up to it, we can’t take them back: the internet never forgets. Every letter lives forever there, the ghost of who you were and what you said, ready to damn or redeem you in your own words. There is a great truth here, the same truth that Solomon tells: words may be easy, but they are never neutral, and when you use them you’re either a bandage or the barrel of a gun.

Respond in Prayer

Dear Father, You gave us the gift of language in all its beauty and power. Help me to use it wisely and for your glory, that I might heal and build and not destroy with my words today. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Michael Bonikowsky