Catching Fire: The Power of Our WordsSample

Have you ever gotten sucked into a social media rabbit hole? You log onto Facebook, Instagram, or X, read one salacious post and then comment, and then another, and then you keep going because it’s obvious people are getting more and more riled up—you can’t look away. Before you know it, you are chiming in and getting sucked into the spiraling disagreement. It feels good . . . for a second. But later, once you have calmed down, you start to wish you could go and take it all back. While it may have felt good at the moment, suddenly, you have a clarity you didn’t have before.

And with that clarity comes this realization: knowing what not to say and when not to speak is just as important as what you say when you do speak. We can learn this the hard way, through experience, or we can take note of Proverbs to learn: sometimes silence is better, and pausing and taking a minute before speaking is always better. Think of a situation in your life where pausing and showing restraint with your words would be a good thing.