Words in the Wind

Do you think that you can reprove words, when the speech of a despairing man is wind? You would even cast lots over the fatherless, and bargain over your friend.
Job 6:26-27
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Words in the Wind
Words are powerful.  They have the ability to build up and tear down.  And in Job’s case, his words were being ignored. Job accuses His friends of disregarding his words and only focusing on what they though Job needed to hear.  Job was reaching out to them for understanding and they could not hear it.  Yes, words are indeed powerful. They are so powerful in fact, that God chose words to communicate Himself to us.  Yes, we can see God in other ways. One can look at the complexity of the universe or the beauty found in nature and know that God exists.  And even the pagan knows in his heart God’s Law, no matter how diluted or suppressed it might be to them.  But one cannot know Christ died for the sins of the world without words.  It is only in God’s Word, the Bible, where we are given the truth of who God is and the great lengths He has gone to, to reconcile us to Him.  When we ignore God’s Word we are like Job’s friends, and deaf to the truth of our situation.  When we are not in the Word, we build ourselves up with our words.  And our words are stained with sin.  They do not have the power to cure the soul.  Yet God’s Word does.  And when He gives that Word to you through His rightly called pastors His Word does marvelous things.  Through Absolution you are forgiven, through God’s Words of Institution, He makes ordinary bread and wine, into His true body and blood.  In the reading of Holy Scripture and the singing of hymns, your faith is strengthened, and your soul restored.  And it is in God’s house, the church, where one can come to hear His Word and receive His Gifts. It is in church where heaven and earth meet and His life-giving Word grants salvation to His children, to you.