The Power of a Word

Our words have power.

Words in themselves are nothing more than air being manipulated and bent into different wavelengths by our mouths. Simply vibrations in the air. But words hold much more power in themselves than that. Words contain the power to do much more than what they physically do.

Words have the power to unite us. This is where we get the gift of language. Language has defined cultures for ages. When that air is vibrated in particular ways, we can begin to form words, with words sentences, with sentences paragraphs, and with paragraphs, stories, and with stories, our story. Humankind's story. The gift of language is something of immense power. In the early days of humankind, it almost was too much power for man to handle.

In Genesis 11, we see the story of the power of language. We meet the human race as one nation. At this point in time, all humans speak the same language. There is no misunderstanding. God had commanded the people to "scatter over the face of the whole earth" and make nations for themselves.

Humankind had another idea in mind. In Genesis 11:4, humans began to say to each other, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." They had heard God's plan for them, but they decided to make one up for themselves. They thought they knew better. Better than the One who made them.

God knew the power of a word. God knew that a word was all it took to create the Heavens and Earth. God knew that it took simply a word to create something out of nothing. He came and saw the tower that humans had been building, and knew that nothing would get in humankinds way if they would continue to be unified under one language. God had no other choice but to confuse us and create many different languages. We could not handle that kind of power.

As a human being, you were created in God's image. He spoke everything else into existence, except for you. For humans, God breathed the "breath of life" into us, and created our bodies out of the dust. To me, this is sort of similar to blowing up a balloon. Balloons are filled with air, but all that a balloon actually consists of is a thin layer of latex. It holds the air inside it to a special shape. We are very similar to the balloon. We have the "breath of life" breathed in to us, and our bodies are merely holding it in.

In this sense, we have both physical and spiritual realities. We are unlike any of God's creation in that we are beings that inhabit both physical and spiritual worlds. We consist of a body and spirit. God gave humans something special. In humans, God gave us the power to create. To create in a similar fashion than He did. With words.

I am in no way trying to compare our ability to create to our Creator's ability to create. God created everything that we see and everything that we do not. We are merely images of Him, and only can piece together what He has already made. Therefore, we are not creators, but in a sense "assemblers" of something that always was, even before we were. If we do not truly create, then whenever we are "creating", we are really putting together pieces of a grander puzzle of creation, already created by the Creator.

Take for example, the cloned sheep Dolly. Dolly was manufactured in a laboratory by scientists, and was not born the natural way. When Dolly was born, the world claimed that they had created on their own. They had played God.

But did they? Did those scientists mention to create anything? Did they think of the sheep before they made it, and weave it together like God did in the beginning? No.

They were only reflecting the image of our Creator.

That is why I say words have power. Words have the power to assemble the image of a creation. When we read a story, we are not taking in information and processing it to make a robotic analysis of what we are reading. Instead, we create the story for ourselves. We see characters; we can taste what they are tasting, smell what they are smelling, etc. We are in the story for ourselves.

Our words have power. This is why entire nations can gather around a single individual or a cause, simply because of words. This is why words have the power to capture our emotions, hearts and minds with a well-put together story. This is why words have the power to create the Heavens and the Earth.

Words have power.