We cannot but speak...

We cannot but speak what we have seen and heard… (Acts 4:20)

My eight-year-old is a talker. Everything he notices, everything he hears gets repeated. Everything that’s on is mind is spoken out loud. It can drive us all a bit crazy. It’s all innocent observation and interest, and for the most part, it’s thrilling as a mother for me to see his mind developing and watch him make new connections between principles and facts. He loves to learn, and I love that about him. But he is a talker.

One issue we have in particular is his tendency to tell everything about every scene in a movie he has seen before, spoilers and all. There is no boundary in his mind (yet) that prevents him from ruining the movie for someone else who hasn’t seen it.

He is literally unable to hinder any previous experience from making its way out of his mouth. The memory is so real, the excitement so potent, that it is unthinkable to keep it to himself alone.

I find intriguing the human process of experience-to-thought-to-words to which we are all bound. Intake determines product, “garbage in, garbage out,” “you are what you eat,” etc. I’ve blogged about that before. But it’s so true, I’ve got to address it again.

What we have been watching, we talk about. What we have been listening to, the conversations we’ve heard, are what we repeat.

What am I listening to? What do I put before my eyes? it is inevitably that which will come out of my mouth. Because we are made to be witnesses. And whether we use that element in our design for good or evil, we will nonetheless use it. Witnesses of something.

Our eyes are always seeing…what is it they see? For it is of this that we will witness. What do we hear? It is this we will repeat.

You cannot but speak that which you have seen and heard. It will come out, despite your attempts to stifle it. It is the natural flow to life.

Herein lies the beauty of God’s perfect plan. Having designed us with this tendency to repeat and reproduce what has entered our existence by our senses, He placed in us this ‘treasure in earthen vessels‘ that is so powerful, it trumps everything else! No experience can compare. And it’s ongoing… ‘further up, further in,’ so to speak. There’s no end to this amazing trip, so there’s always something more to say.

It is therefore my goal to seek Him with my eyes, studying His Word, and listen for His Voice with my ears…the ‘witness’ part is inevitable.