A Word Fitly Spoken

I’m an awkward 12 years old wearing my ‘good dress’ and the house is filling up with relatives for our family’s Christmas Eve party.

My Aunt Lucille comes into the living room with that most adult of dishes: green and black olives. (We only have olives when there are guests. They are a treat for adults and I am encouraged to believe they taste nasty.)

She sets the olives on the coffee table and smiles at me.

Then she looks at the dress I am wearing and hands me my earliest memory of a gold apple when she says

“You have beautiful legs!”

I’m in my early thirties, in that golden era when crushed velvet leggings are being sold in Lerner (aka today’s New York & Company/NYC). I’m at work wearing said leggings and a chenille tunic. I unlock the gate as employees arrive for the day.

One of the women looks at my legs as she bends under the partially lifted gate and says:

“For a heavy woman, you know, you don’t have fat legs.”

Same legs. Couple of years gone by since my aunt’s comment. Different words. I remember how I felt hearing them.

One, my aunt's comment, was a gold apple; it went into my harvest basket.

The other had worms. It went into my basket, too.

Apples of Gold

The concept of a word being a 'golden apple' is from the Book of Proverbs: "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver." Proverbs 25:11.

Just as someone gathers fruit in a harvest, they search for the ones that are the best, the ripest, the sweetest. So, too, is the concept that every word we speak to someone goes into their harvest. Sweet or wormy!

Another couple of golden apple examples:

My early forties and I am newly divorced after 24 years of marriage. I’m contemplating moving out of state to work for the corporate side of the bookstore company where I am currently a manager. I’m very nervous about the job and move, and unsure of myself in practically everything; my confidence is at an all-time low.

My friend Bill-from-California is on the phone with me and says

“No one knows operations like you do. You’re perfect for this job.”

That was a golden apple and it went, treasured and gleaming, into my harvest basket where it sustained my courage.

I move and immerse myself in the job. It’s hard work for me, lots of spreadsheets during the day and quiet lonely nights alone afterwards. I’m on a too-short weekend visit back to Pittsburgh and I stop in my former church before I head back to Michigan.

An older gentleman asks me how I’m doing, and I tear up a little when I answer that it is good, but hard. He nods and smiles: I think he has misunderstood me, but then he hands me a gold apple when he says

“That’s good! If it wasn’t hard then you wouldn’t be growing.”

Over the next few weeks , whenever things felt hopeless and the spreadsheet numbers flitted around like pesky ants refusing to settle, I remembered his words and knew that I was growing.

How's the Harvest?

I know what it’s like to receive words that are wormy apples and how it feels to receive fitly-spoken golden apple words. I’m positive that I’ve handed out my share of wormy-apple words. I’m trying to make sure more of them are gold.

It’s worth the effort because everything spoken, and in these days every digital comment and email, goes into someone’s harvest. We can choose to sustain each other with the golden apples, giving words that build up the recipients.

Or, we can add another bad apple to the basket. One that can spoil and corrupt, draining energy and vitality.

We spend so much time online now, and comments are typed out, texted, uploaded. It's easy to forget that each one is part of that day's harvest for the recipient.

courtesy of YouTube

In the 70’s Donny Osmond pled to have one last chance to prove that love is possible even after a bad apple hit the harvest basket. And although one bad apple may not spoil the whole basket, it adds to the load and doesn’t give anything positive back.

Words, like apples, should be chosen carefully.

~

Although this was fun to write and recognized by Vocal as a Top Story- I did NOT give out shiny apples when I wrote it.

My guess is that Mr Rogers gave out very few wormy apples.

~

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