This past January I was grating a potato for a dinner recipe when I accidentally grated my fingernail, barely missing my finger.
It has been five full months now and the fingernail still has not completely grown back yet.
It’s not for lack of trying.
It has done its best to heal. But the stresses of normal everyday life keep chipping away at it.
The nail is weak … therefore normal tasks, such as weeding in the flowerbeds, wear it back almost to where it started.
This is a lot like life.
People all around us are trying to accomplish the job their life requires … and in the process they wind up absentmindedly grating pieces off of other people’s souls.
A sharp word.
A sharp criticism.
A sharp response.
A sharp reaction.
Not enough to cause major harm.
But pieces of the soul are grated off, nonetheless.
It hurts … when people absentmindedly grate pieces off our soul.
But we have to keep going.
We move on … and try to heal.
However, that small corner of our soul has now been weakened.
The stresses of life continue to bear down just like always. We keep moving forward, making it through one day at a time. But that small corner of our soul remains frayed and damaged. It just won’t seem to heal … not with life continually chipping away at it.
Proverbs 18:21 – “The tongue has the power of life and death.”
Proverbs 17:27 – “A man of knowledge uses words with restraint, and a man of understanding is even-tempered.”
