Big Results with Small Things
John D. Telgren


Sometimes it takes a big effort to get a big job done. The feeling of a job well done is great. However, there are some big things that take very little, if any effort to get accomplished. I can remember watching a scrawny man lift huge pallets of bricks up to a second story construction site in Korea. He was using a system of pulleys, so it took very little effort.

There is something else that takes very little effort but has a big result. Notice: "So also the tongue is a small part of the body and yet it boasts of great things. Behold how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and set on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. ...it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison." (James 3:5-8)

Like a carelessly tossed cigarette, your tongue can damage hundreds of square miles. It doesn"t take much cyanide to do a person in. Sometimes people don"t even know they have been poisoned, it is almost unnoticeable. By the time it is discovered, it is often too late.

Sowing seeds of discord, gossip, slander, outbursts of anger, and things of the sort will damage the church that Christ died for. That is why James gives the exhortation to "bridle the tongue". In other words, James is telling Christians to shut up if they can"t build up.