Before We Speak Our Mind ......

The story is told of a preacher who once generalized that all infidels were fools. Furthermore, he stated that he could prove his statement to be true for any given case within ten minutes. A man in the audience stood up and proclaimed himself to be an infidel, but no fool.

The preacher looked him over and asked, "So, you are an infidel?"

The man replied, "Yes sir. I deny that there is anything at all in religion."

The preacher replied, "Nothing at all in religion? Are you willing to go on record as saying that?"

The man then confidently replied, "Go on record? Why, I've been writing and lecturing against religion for twenty years."

The preacher glanced at his watch and said, "Well, I said I could prove an infidel a fool in ten minutes, and I still have seven minutes left. So, I'll leave it to the audience to decide if man isn't a fool to write and lecture for twenty years against a thing that supposedly has nothing whatsoever in it!"

Dear reader, the moral of the above story is this: Before we speak our mind ..... let's make certain that there's something in our mind worth speaking!

Along this line of thought, the Proverb writer declares:

"He who restrains his lips is wise" (Proverbs 10:19 NASB; cf. Proverbs 17:27-28; Ecclesiastes 5:1-3; Ecclesiastes 10:13-14; James 1:19; James 3:2).

—Mike Riley, Gospel Snippets