A mother who was preparing dinner one evening, when her little boy came running into the kitchen.
She asked, “Well, what’s Mama’s little darling been doing all day?”
He replied, “I’ve been playing mailman.”
“Mailman,” the mother wondered out loud, “how could you do that when you don’t have any letters?”
“Oh, I had a whole bunch of letters,” he said. “What letters?”
The little boy answered, “All those letters I found in the bottom drawer of your dresser all tied up with v ribbons . . . I put one in every mailbox on our street.”
This illustration was given by Stephen Davey that he read in James Merritt, Friends, Foes, and Fools: The Wisdom of Proverbs for Fathers (Nashville, TN, Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), p. 40. Stephen Davey’s sermon is entitled A New Obsession on Romans 8:5-11 (at Wisdom for the Heart).
This mother had her neighbors unwittingly read and discover her words. What about this statement by Jesus, ”Every idle word that men will speak, they will give account thereof in the day of judgment” (Matthew 12:36).
