We all live by words; words are our most basic form of communicating our thoughts. To the writer they are his life's blood. To the preacher they are the principle carriers of the message of the Gospel. To the teacher they are the carriers of knowledge. For the actor or actress their character is created through their words turned into actions. Words can take your hopes to cloud nine and they can as easily dash them to pieces.

Language is dynamic. New words enter into our vocabulary; old words change their meaning over time. I think of so many words that did not exist when I was growing up. Of course, I am older than most but there are many who remember when television was a new word. I remember when I was about 12 a boy told me that he had read in Popular Science about a radio kind of thing that you could have movies in your living room all the time. I thought he was crazy but, sure enough, in my living room is a box that I can see movies on anytime and in my pocket there is an IPod that I can see movies on when I am traveling.

Words like laptop and gigabyte had no meaning thirty years ago. A cell phone would have been a pay phone at the city jail … by the way, what is a pay phone? Gay meant happy and cool meant you needed to wear a jacket when you went outside. What ever happened to mean what you say and say what you mean?

In olden times people believed that words had a life of their own. Once spoken words would go on for years, some doing damage while others gave happiness. Children would say, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me," knowing all the while that words do hurt sometimes more than sticks or stones. It is not just what you say either. How you say something may be more devastating to someone else than sticks or stones. Saying we did not mean it or it was just a joke does no good at all. Even time cannot always erase the damage.

Let's you and me resolve in this New Year to be careful with our words. The Bible tells us to let our yes be a simple yes and our no a simple no. It tells us to love our neighbor …we are all neighbors. It tells us to put others ahead of ourselves. Ergo, what we say tells others who we are and what we think. Or, as Jeff Foxworthy said, "I wanted my girlfriend to go to the movie with me but her daddy wouldn't let ergo."