Seasoned with Grace

Have you ever sat down to a meal, looking forward to indulging in some delicious food, only to find that the food had not been seasoned, or that it had been improperly seasoned?  What a disappointment!  Recently when we were out to dinner, I was served a steak that looked beautiful.  Imagine my disappointment when I bit into it and discovered that it had not been seasoned at all and had also been improperly cooked.......dry and tasteless instead of juicy and yummy!  Lack of proper seasoning made a big difference.

Or imagine an improperly seasoned plate of food......like spaghetti for example, loaded with cumin instead of the appropriate spices.  Yuck!  Or what about a bowl of chili seasoned with the appropriate spices but with too heavy a hand.  Appropriate seasoning but inappropriate amounts.  The result will be just as distasteful.

The way our food is seasoned (or not!) makes a difference in how we react to what we put into our mouths.  A similar effect occurs with the words that come out of our mouths.

"Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person."  (Colossians 4:6 NASB)

Have you ever thought about it that way?  About seasoning your speech with grace?

I think I may have become more aware of this in these weeks of caring for mother-in-law.  Because of her medical issues, it's important not only what we say to her, but how we say it.  But isn't that really true for all of us, whether we have dementia or not?

Think about how often your own feelings have been hurt by something someone said to you.  And quite often they did not intend hurt at all.  But just as Indian or Mexican spices are not appropriate for Italian cuisine and do not give the desired flavor, often the words we say and the words said to us have an other-than-intended result.

Often it's just because we speak too hastily, having our mouths in motion before our brains are in gear, as the old saying goes.

More often, however, I'm afraid the problem boils down to our own selfishness.  Too often we're only concerned with our own interests, our own needs, our own concerns, and fail to give any thought at all to the needs or concerns of the other person.  We fail to consider how what we say might affect someone else.

So, the challenge for all of us is to think before we speak.  To follow the exhortation of Colossians, to season our speech with grace, "so that you (we) will know how you (we) should respond to each person."

"A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver."  (Proverbs 25:11 ESV)