“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!”
-Ecclesiastes 4:9-10
We all have times where we’re just broken. Discouraged, low, hopeless. In the pendulum of life, our own souls or the things surrounding us frequently bring us swinging back to this place where we just feel fractured. It doesn’t necessarily take much to get us to this point either. I’ve been broken over giant, monstrous things. I’ve been broken over hurtful things whispered about me, relational strife, minuscule things.
It takes very little to make a soul feel broken.
Being transparent, I’ve been stuck in cycle of brokenness this semester. It seems like I move out of it and back into a place of wholeness and stable ground simply to just be sent reeling and running to the Lord to have him put fractured pieces back together while I stand on stable ground. I think most of us find ourselves in this cycle.
Earlier this week, I found myself in this place once again, choosing alone time and digging deep into the Lord and my own soul in order to cope with words I heard whispered about me. Disparaging words are like arrows to the heart.
Yet, as I was walking through the cafeteria, picking out food for lunch, I heard words that brought a smile to my face and took weight off of my heart. Somewhere behind me, I heard a friend of mine tell someone she was sitting with,
“I just love Kelvey.”
You see, the words weren’t weighty or lengthy; I don’t even think this friend knew I could hear her. Yet, in one small sentence, my day was instantly made a little bit better, and my heart was uplifted. All it took was this friend choosing to be an encourager and an uplifter behind my back, not a disparager.
Y’all, we need to choose to be UPLIFTERS. As people who dwell within Christ, we are called to bear one another’s burdens, to help carry those around us who are weary, hurting, broken. We can’t do that if we are the ones causing a fellow human to be broken or hurting.
Ephesians 4:29 says, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”
If we aren’t using our words and actions to be uplifting, we are automatically going to be discouragers, the ones beating other people down. However it may feel in the moment to say something unkind or nasty to another person, any positive results from such action will fade and leave you, along with the person you were disparaging, lower than before.
Godly words, uplifting words not only help to heal the soul and lift burdens from the shoulders of the people you talk to, they infiltrate your own soul as well. Not only are you helping to heal another person by being an uplifter-your own soul is being healed as well.
If we truly realized how much power uplifting words carry, I think that we would be quick to use them. If you have ever had simple words completely change your day that was spiraling downward, you know what I’m talking about.
Let us be powerful, let us be difference makers, let us be uplifters.
“Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.”
-Proverbs 16:24
KELVEY OLIVIA VANDER HART 