Once It's Out...

2 Timothy 2:8-15

There's a saying that goes, "You can't put the toothpaste back into the tube." I first heard this saying in my early 20's while training for a management position for a local restaurant. We were doing mock interviews and I had said something to the effect of, "You would be hired as just a counter person" and the feedback I got was, "What do you mean, 'just'?"

Once the words are said, they are said. It is impossible to take something and make it unheard. For that matter, it's impossible to unsee, unsmell, unfeel, or untaste something as well. Once it's been experienced, it's been experienced. Some of you might point to traumatic events which our brain decides to hide, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the everyday things we go through which our senses take in and never let go of.

Through this knowledge I have learned that the things we do and say will leave a lasting impact on others. This knowledge is multiplied even further now that I am a Christian and working my way towards becoming an ordained minister. More so now than ever, the words I say and the actions I perform are looked at and scrutinized as being the "truth".

Funny word, truth. In the Western culture, truth is measured by and through fact. How much of what one says is only believed by the amount of people and books from which they can recite. In more traditional cultures, like say the early Judeo-Christians, truth was what one came to understand through their own discoveries. In order for something to be true, it had to be experienced.

It's through experiencing God's truth that Timothy is being told to keep up the fight. Hence, the short list of verbs in today's passage. Have died, will also live, endure, reign, deny, are faithless, remains, and cannot are all words of action. And they are action words which remind us to never stop believing in God's love and guidance.

What this second letter to Timothy is meant to do is let us know that the words of God cannot be held back because the words of truth, of true experience, live on no matter what. Therefore, if we proclaim ourselves as Christians we need to do all we can to live out what that word means so that through Jesus Christ those around us will come to experience, and therefore understand, God's unconditional acceptance.

Our words have consequences. Our actions have consequences. Let our words and actions show how God's love is still alive in our world today.