Here’s a Bible verse we should all commit to memory: ‘Keep what you know to yourself, and you will be safe; talk too much, and you are done for’ (v. 3 CEV). In other words, a tendency to speak without thinking will keep getting you into trouble. To illustrate this point, here’s a story about a vacuum cleaner salesman! He had been given a remote rural area as his territory, and on his first day on the job, he was going from farmhouse to farmhouse, trying to sell vacuum cleaners. As he arrived at one farmhouse way off the beaten track, he knocked on the door and was met by a farmer’s wife who asked him what he wanted. Without asking permission, he shoved right past her into the kitchen and said, ‘I’m selling vacuum cleaners.’ Shocked, she replied, ‘Wait a minute!’ But he demanded, ‘Madam, before you say anything, I want to show you something.’ Then he reached into his bag, pulled out a pail of dirt, and threw it across her kitchen floor. ‘If my vacuum cleaner won’t pick up all that dirt,’ he bragged, ‘then I’ll eat it!’ She looked at him and said, ‘Then you’re hungry, ’cause we don’t have electricity here!’ How often we have to eat the words we so recklessly toss on the floor of everyday living! Be careful. Jesus said one day we will give an account for every idle word we speak (see Matthew 12:36). An unknown poet wrote, ‘Be careful of the words you say and keep them soft and sweet. You never know from day to day which ones you’ll have to eat.’ So it’s always a good idea to think carefully before speaking.
