The ability to communicate with one another is one of the big challenges of our time.

Our inability to communicate is sometimes at the heart of so many of our problems. How often do you hear people saying: “I am getting mixed messages. You say one thing, but you do another. Am I not right?”

The problems of holding our tongue and communicating properly are not new problems - they are old problems.

Remember the words we were taught when we were bairns: “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.”

How wrong that is. Words do hurt.

There is an incredible power in words. Shakespeare knew of this and, in act 3, scene 3 of Othello, he had Iago say:

“Who steals my purse steals trash ...

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him

And makes me poor indeed.”

Oh, the damage we can do by the words we speak and the gossip we spread - and who among us has not done it?

Once, a pious woman with a sharp tongue approached her minister. She complained that the white bands which he wore with his robes were too long.

She wanted permission to shorten them and had come armed with a pair of scissors. The minister agreed and she snipped away.

He said: “Now, there is something about you which is altogether too long and which has annoyed me for quite some time, and since one good turn deserves another, I would like your permission to shorten it.”

Startled, the woman said: “Certainly sir, you have my permission.”

Whereupon, the minister smiled and said: “Very well, stick out your tongue.”

When you praise a child and their face lights up with joy, again, you see how much good a word can do. Sometimes the right words can even lift up a whole nation.

Like Winston Churchill’s words during the darkest hours of World War II: “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender.”

What a difference our words can make. It is literally true that words can be death or life, a curse or a blessing.

You and I have no idea the influence the words we speak have for bad or good. So it is good now and again to pause and think before our tongues get into gear.