Sunday, September 5, 2010

The Stroke Of The Tongue

Like all gifts 'which cometh from above,' words are 'sacred, and must be spoken with care, and by constraint of the Spirit' (D&C 63:64). It is with this realization of the power and sanctity of words that I wish to caution us, if caution is needed, regarding how we speak to each other and how we speak of ourselves. There is a line from the Apocrypha which puts the seriousness of this issue better than I can. It reads, 'The stroke of the whip maketh marks in the flesh: but the stroke of the tongue breaketh the bones' (Ecclesiasticus 28:17).
--Jeffrey R. Holland