That title sounds like I’m going to talk about a popular “end-times” book series. I’m not. Instead, I’m going to talk about a bird that just perched on the back of our lounge chair by the pool.

You see, I sat down to write about something else this morning, and as I opened my computer and gazed out the window like I always do, I saw the little guy land there on the back of the chair. He was cute, a bunting, and I watched him scan the lay of the land before he suddenly took off, leaving behind a long stream of white poop running down the back of the chair.

Now the dark woven back of the chair is marred by the white sloppy mess. It changes the whole look of the chair and, obviously, no one would want to sit there. It seems the purpose of the chair is even altered.

Yesterday, I witnessed something similar on an aisle at the Home Depot. Scanning the shelves for some kind of armadillo repellent (have I mentioned we make our home on the grounds of Critter World?), a couple came around the corner, bickering. It was just nit-picky stuff at first, but it continued to escalate as if I wasn’t even there. Very quickly, I wasn’t there, having abandoned my search, and moved to the next aisle where I needed exactly nothing. But they could still be heard and, just as he came around into my aisle to get away, himself, she was on his heels, lambasting him with such a litany of demeaning and belittling things, his entire countenance changed before my eyes. What had been a fairly large man just minutes before, was visibly reduced to small and mouse-like. He looked like the air had been knocked out of him, and he just stood there like he had no recollection of his original purpose for coming in the store in the first place.

Looking at the poop on that chair, I realize that the filth issuing from that woman’s mouth was just as nasty and foul. It may not look messy and white, but it is there, all the same, marring that poor man and, sadly, he’ll never be able to take a hose to it, and clean it off. Our hateful words slice like knives, so once the blood is cleaned away, and the wounds healed, there are still scars.

My chair will be back in business in no time, but I’m not sure about that man. I’m praying both he, and his wife, will have their eyes opened and allow Healing into their lives. Thankfully, unlike that little bird, you and I have control over the filth that flows from us, and what it is we leave behind.

“Rash language cuts and maims,but there is healing in the words of the wise.” Proverbs 12:18 MSG

“Words kill, words give life;they’re either poison or fruit—you choose.” Proverbs 18:21 MSG

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” Ephesians 4:29 ESV

“Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips!” Psalm 141:3 ESV