Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 276 · October 3
A Little Fire
“Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!”
The line of char on a burnt hillside narrows as investigators walk it back, until it stops at a patch of ground you could cover with a coat. Whatever started it was small enough to lose in the grass.
James has been stacking small things that steer large ones. Behold, we put bits in the horses' mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body. Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm. Then the kind of smallness changes. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth. The word behind matter is the word for wood or a forest, which is why other Bibles print forest there, and the next line drops the picture entirely: And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity.
He is not the first to price this up. Proverbs puts it in commercial terms, death and life are in the power of the tongue, as though the mouth held both in stock. Jesus goes after the cheapest end of the range: every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. Idle, the ones thrown out sideways in a corridor as you pass. And James closes the obvious exit before anybody reaches it. Every kind of beast and bird and serpent has been tamed by somebody, but the tongue can no man tame.
Investigators work backwards from the damage, the only direction left once the hillside has gone. The prayer Scripture puts in your mouth works from the other end, and what it asks for is a guard. Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips. A sentry at the point of origin, posted by somebody else, on a door you cannot hold shut alone.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 276 is Loved as Jesus Is Loved (John 17:23).