Encourage Yourselves Daily

“Encourage yourselves daily while it is still ‘today’...” Hebrews 3:13

In another version of the Bible, it says to encourage one another daily. Encourage comes from an early 15th century French word, ‘encoragier’, which means to make strong, and to hearten. To hearten means to inspire with courage, hope or spirit. It may also mean to stimulate growth, to foster or to help. 

Ever since the pandemic, many have been interested in taking care of plants, and I know many ‘plantitas’. I do not have a green thumb but I know that talking to plants helps it to grow better. The researchers of the Royal Horticultural Society conducted a month long study which actually corroborates this. 

If plants respond well to encouragement, how much more will humans? We need to intentionally talk and behave in a way that gives people around us the stimuli to be better and to do better. Sometimes it is sad but true, we can be our own worst critic! We should not only be kind to others but to ourselves as well. We should not be the person who stunts another’s growth, or hinders our own growth because we are discouraging or unsupportive. 

Someone told me of a teacher in an exclusive school who was so disparaging of a young student’s artwork, that she actually crumpled it. The student became so disheartened he killed himself. Here we see the devastating power of words. But words also have a creative power. We all know the first verse in the book of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” We also know the verse from the first chapter of Genesis, about the creation of the world, “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” We can create light in our life and the life of others by our words. 

The theme chosen for the 2018 Holocaust Memorial Day was “The Power of Words”.  David Sterling who spoke at the event said, “Words can have a huge impact, whether for the good or bad....If we are to help build our shared and diverse society, we must ensure that words should never be tolerated to marginalise, inflict pain and hurt against anyone regardless of race, colour, religion, creed, nationality, sexual orientation, or disability.  We must learn from the past if we are to build a better future.”

More than ever today, we should choose our words to create light in a dark world, bring love Into miserable situations, and peace where there is turmoil and chaos.