“How sweet Your Word is to my taste—sweeter than honey in my mouth.” Psalm 119:103
Well, I guess it is only partly so. All my life I have picked up things that were said and passed along. As I grew a little older, I discovered that some of them are true and some just aren’t. A friend in our office had a stye in her eye that was really bothering her. She made an appointment with the doctor but before she went, I asked her, quite sincerely, “Did you rub the stye with a gold ring?” Well, she looked at me like a calf at a new gate (that’s one of those sayings) and said, “What?”
Well, I tried to explain to her that all my life this was something I heard. In fact, I can clearly remember my Momma taking my Daddy’s wedding band (which I now own) and rubbing my eye with it. What I don’t remember is if anything happened. And that’s not all. I was a full-grown adult before I found out how much time I wasted growing up by waiting 30 minutes after I ate before going back into the water to swim. It was just a fact that if you did you were probably going to drown. Turns out—ain’t so. How about that?
A saying that I have heard all of life is, “possession is nine-tenths of the law.” I’m not even sure what that means but I think it means that if your neighbor borrows your pitchfork and doesn’t return it for a long while and then you go back and try to retrieve it, somehow it magically becomes his. Come to think of it, I still have my friends pitchfork from my days in Cobden. Oh, and I think there is a shovel out there in the garage too. Maybe there is some truth there after all.
Well, a takeoff from that saying is this saying—and it is true. It goes something like this, “Perception is nine-tenths of the message.” In other words, how a person perceives what you say is just as important as what you say. Think about it—and I think you will agree. If you say something and the person thinks you said something totally different it can be hurtful and confusing. It is also true when we try to describe something and just aren’t clear. We say it one way…and they hear another. It reminds me of the story of three blind men who tried to describe an elephant. They each grabbed a different part of the elephant, and each had a totally different perspective.
A while back, I was teaching and was talking about how we describe the Bible. So often we portray it was a Book of just no, no, and no again. Well, there are plenty of no’s in the Bible but there is also plenty of times when God says yes! The main message of the Bible isn’t rules and regulations but God’s grace and redemption. From the beginning to the end, the message is the same: God loves us, and God wants to redeem us. He extends grace to all that are willing to turn from their sin and believe.
So, the next time you are trying to paint a word picture of something, keep in mind the importance of perception. And the next time you are telling your friend about the Bible and what the Bible says, remember, perception is important. Need a little help? No problem. The God who inspired it and led men to write it…well, He’s got that. Bro. Dewayne
Grits with Grace 