A Facebook comment and a desire of my heart.
I was scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed today, and saw that an old friend of mine commented on a mutual friend's photo. She said something that I used to say all the time when we lived together back at JMU, saying the girl in the photo was the cutest "human". It was one of those things that other people around me picked up and started saying because I said it so much. I called everyone humans. I'm pretty sure I picked it up from one of my best friends before I started saying it, too.
Seeing that little comment struck me. That little word is in her vocabulary now, it's something she says to other people. And she, on probably way too many occasions, heard it said from me. And I first heard it said from someone else. It became a phrase that came out of my mouth often, without me even really ever thinking about it.
Saying "human" a lot is a really little, insignificant thing. But it became part of my normal vocabulary because I spent time around someone who said it often, and I absorbed it, and it become something I, in turn, said often. And now, somebody who spent a lot of time around me hearing me say that says it too.
That little word doesn't really matter. Life doesn't really come from it. Nobody is really changed by it.
But words can bring life. Words can bring change. I know that the more time I spend in the Word, the more I absorb it and the more it becomes something I talk about often. I hear the words first said by Jesus Christ and they become words that I speak in my life too. I want to speak more words that first came from Him. I want to spend more time around Him, in His word, absorbing His grace and His love and His language so that it flows from me effortlessly and constantly.
I know the more time I spend around my friends, the more we begin to talk like each other, echoing different speech patterns or phrases or little quirks. I know the more time I spend with my Savior and Creator, the more I'll begin to look and act and speak like Him. I'll find His words becoming part of my conversations, I'll hear His truth resounding in my heart, I'll find myself echoing all that He said and all that He was and is. I want to spend so much time in the Word and in conversation with my Father that it becomes so hard to tell where His words stop and mine start. I want to sound like Him. I want to speak His truth. I want to share His love. I want to look and sound so much more like Him than like myself. My words are clumsy, insignificant, meaningless. His words are life. His words are love. His words are perfect, true, powerful. Lord, let my words be Yours.
I will wait and hold fast to Your word
Heart on Your heart and my eyes on You.