The power of our words to encourage can never be underestimated. One of the common things that holds us back is the thoughts, “They won’t want to hear from me” or “I may offend them if I speak this to them.” One of my favourite motto’s is, “If you are going to make a mistake, make a mistake to love.” In other words better to overlove than to underlove, prophecy than stay silent, encourage then to hang back.
So which sort of person are you? Here is a poem I read recently which makes this point (apologies I am unsure of the author)…
I saw them tearing a building down,
A gang of men in a dusty town.
With a “yo heave ho” and a lusty yell,
They swung a beam and the side wall fell.
I asked the foreman if these men were as skilled
As the men he’d hire, if he were to build.
He laughed and said, “Oh, no indeed.
Common labor is all I need.”
For those men can wreck in a day or two,
What builders had taken years to do.
I asked myself as I went my way,
Which kind of role am I to play?
Am I the builder who builds with care,
Measuring life by the rule and square?
Or am I the wrecker who walks the town,
Content with the role of tearing down?
Carl Mutzelburg 