As a young man, I may not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to fireworks. I loved lighting the tiny little fuse and waiting for the big BOOM! Something about the smell of the gunpowder that excited me as a young boy and the thought of blowing up small things. Even when I didn’t have fireworks, I had learned that if you put “strike anywhere” match heads in the nut between two bolts and drop it on its end, it would explode with a loud noise and shoot the bolts into the air… (unless you twist the bolts too tightly and it blows up before you drop it… you wanna know how I know that?) Now the warning on the side of the Roman Candles says “do not hold in your hand, light and get away,” obviously did not apply to me, especially when my college friends and I would shoot them at each other. Any time we passed a firework stand we bought a few to make the evenings interesting. You would think that having a firecracker blow up in my fingers as a 10 year old would have cured my recklessness with the small incendiary devices, however, that was not the case. There were many fireworks launched by me and others that I wish I could have brought back, but that is impossible once the fuse is lit. My friends almost burned down my bestman’s neighborhood at my bachelor party while shooting Roman candles at each other without considering that a dead and dried up 20 foot evergreen tree was in the blast area. The resulting conflagration could be seen throughout his fancy neighborhood and the heat was so intense that we couldn’t approach it. Fortunately, by the time someone got the presence of mind to grab a garden hose, the fire had lessened considerably. I was just glad it wasn’t close to the house and that the grass was green and well watered. I did finally get some sense and better judgment when my own kids were young, but the firework danger was just as present. At one family gathering some nephews decided to shoot some bottle rockets into my dad’s field that had been cut, but not yet baled. The hay ignited immediately. If not for the quick thinking of my niece, who grabbed a water hose and dowsed the flames, the whole field, and neighboring fields, houses, and barns could have been destroyed as the wind was whipping that night.
In the early church, apparently there were some people who were “shooting off at the mouth” saying harmful and hurtful things to other people and not considering the consequences of their verbal recklessness. Their words, once spoken, like a lit Roman Candle, could not be retracted. So, James the half brother of Jesus, gave this reminder to God’s people: “Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” (James 3:5–6) Sometimes we all need to be reminded to be careful about our words. Our words, carelessly launched into the lives of those around us can be so destructive, some to be remembered for a lifetime, even in spite of our attempts to take them back later. Our words can also be like gasoline or water on a fire of gossip. So let’s be careful out there, with our fireworks and our words.
Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!
