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Wednesday

Not the Rice instead of the Barley! - A Dose of Encouragement


Two things I love to eat are homemade vegetable soup and homemade rice pudding so I always have some barley in the house for the soup and some rice to make the pudding.






Often when I am making things my mind is elsewhere thinking of the next thing I need to do, or something I've forgotten to do or I am chatting to whoever is around at the time.


So inevitably, I admit I sometimes end up doing silly things like putting pudding rice into my soup instead of barley.  


Well they did sit side by side in matching containers on a shelf in one of my kitchen cupboards and when someone is not really paying enough attention they could easily mistake one for the other as the barley and rice grains are a bit similar in size.     Yes?


Note they do not sit side by side in matching containers any longer - I learnt my lesson.



Well I did this one day because I was chatting to my husband and one of the kids and I ended up with soup that no-one in the family (not even me) would eat.


A whole pot of soup had to be thrown out.


Why?


Because I had, without thinking carefully, added the wrong ingredient to the pot.


It caused a lot of laughter and teasing by the kids of course.






Later I thought about how a conversation can be like a recipe.


Often we probably add the wrong words in a conversation because we are not concentrating properly and can end up with something that is confusing, unintelligible, unhelpful and not edifying.


Do we just say certain phrases
     because we have heard others use them,
     because they seem like they might be the right thing to say,
     because we have misheard the person
or even
     because we have assumed what the other person means.


Then what about when we try to use verses from the Bible which are not right for the situation.


Maybe we just think of a verse 
     because of a certain word we pick up on in the conversation,
     because we have been reading it lately,
     because we have memorized it at some time,
or even 
     because we know the reference for it and that looks impressive to others.



We need to listen before we speak.

Have you heard that before?


Have we honed in on the real topic or just think we have?

Do we need to make sure, do we need to ask a few questions?




We need to think before we speak.

How often have we heard that before?


Are we taking a verse out of context?

Does it really have any bearing on the situation before us?




But we also need to pray before we speak.

Do we hear that as often?


Lord help us to play our proper part in conversations.

May we think and pray before we speak to add the right ingredients into the pot.



We need to listen, think and pray before we speak!


It is always better to listen carefully to the conversation and say little but make sure that what we do say is suitable, the God inspired words and not the rice instead of the barley.