This day, gratefully hear God’s word of blessing: Go out into the world knowing this with certainty: Words matter; a word matters; and, most assuredly, the Word matters. Your words can unleash power to build up or tear down. They can proclaim God’s love to the world, or further draw shadows with enmity and distrust. Sometimes, a single word, said without thinking, can rescue or it can imperil. The Word, God made flesh in Jesus Christ, which was from the beginning, brings life and light into a weary and dissonant world. And the darkness can never overcome that Word. So our charge and call is to say words and the Word, most needed and supplied by God, to bring about God’s kingdom; to use words, and say a word, that makes Jesus Christ, the Word, a reality to all those whose paths we cross. Amen

Rev. Charles Carroll Smith, Interim Presbytery Pastor at Indian Nations Presbytery, Oklahoma City