NO DO OVERS
Proverbs 17:27, 28
"He who has knowledge spares his words, and a man of understanding is of a calm spirit. Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace; when he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive."
I have always lived by the old adage in hunting that says, “don’t pass up on the first day what you would take on the last day”. This just means that you should be happy with an animal early in the hunt, if you would be happy with it at the end of the hunt. I have had several hunters over the years that have passed up several good animals early in the hunt and later in the hunt that have asked me if they could go back and hunt where they passed those animals… rarely does that every work out. Most of the time there are no “do overs” or mulligans (as in golfing) in hunting.
I’m not much of a golfer… in fact when I used to golf, the cost of the balls I lost outweighed the cost of green fees. I have on occasion woken up the neighbors of the golf course a when a sharp slice ricocheted off their patio door.
The only way I could get any kind of respectable score would be to give me a mulligan on each hole.
The dictionary defines a mulligan as “a shot not counted against the score, permitted in unofficial play to a player whose previous shot was poor.” In other words, a mulligan is a “do-over.”
Unfortunately, life is not really like a game of golf. We rarely get a “do over” when we deal with real life situations. This is especially true when we are dealing with what we say to others. We need to be careful what we say, as once words are out if our mouths, we can’t take them back.
James 3:5 tells us if the destructive power of a small tongue. “So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!”.
What kind of fire can we ignite with our tongues? An enormous blaze that can not be put out by other words. Once our words have left our mouths they cannot be pulled back.
Deanna Wadsworth once said
There are Four things you can't recover:
The stone after the throw,
The word after it's said,
The occasion after it's missed,
The time after it's gone.
In life there are few “do overs”. Be careful what you say…. You may never get a chance to take the words back.
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