A Little Fire

On a burnt hillside, fire investigators walk the line of charred ground backwards. It grows narrower as they go, until it stops at a patch of earth you could cover with a coat. Whatever started the fire was small enough to lose in the grass.

James has been lining up 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 small thing changes: "Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!" The Greek word behind "matter" means a stand of wood, a forest, so James pictures a whole forest set alight by one spark. The next line drops the picture altogether: "And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity."

James is not the first to put a price on our words. Proverbs says, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue," as if the mouth kept both in stock. Jesus speaks about the cheapest words of all: "every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." Idle words are the careless ones tossed out in passing. And James closes the easy way out before anybody reaches for 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, because once the hillside has burned, that is the only direction left. The prayer Scripture gives you works from the other end, before any spark. It asks for a guard: "Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips." That guard stands right where the fire starts. You cannot hold that door shut alone, so ask the Lord each morning to post His watch there, and trust Him to keep the door you cannot.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 276 is Loved as Jesus Is Loved (John 17:23).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two