Careless words start fires
Faith in Taranaki
Recently we have seen examples of significant fires both in New Zealand and overseas. The result has been that many hectares of land and forest, homes and other buildings and infrastructure, such as power supply lines, have been damaged or destroyed and lives lost.
Two separate fires in the Nelson and Tasman District started on February 5. Three thousand residents of Wakefield were evacuated as a result of the Pigeon Valley fire and 2400 hectares were burned.
In a period of 24 hours at the beginning of this month, firefighters battled two large fires, in Porangahau, Hawke’s
Bay and near Cromwell. Sonoma County, California was ravaged by fire in October, burning through 20,200 hectares of land, fanned by winds of more than 164kmh. Some 180,000 people were ordered to leave their homes. In September, multiple bushfires broke out across New South Wales and Queensland. And so the list for this year goes on: Amazon fire 906,000 hectares burned, Alberta 803,393h burned, Siberia 14.9 million hectares burned and Melbourne 12,400 hectares.
When vegetation is burned, the nitrogen it contains is released into the atmosphere. Elements such as potassium and phosphorus in the ash are quickly recycled into the soil but the loss of nitrogen produces a long-term reduction in its fertility.
In each instance, what started as a small, flickering flame has grown until it has become a major challenge to be extinguished.
It was not until March 6, 2019, that the Nelson Tasman Emergency Management Group stated that the Pigeon Valley fire was ‘‘controlled’’.
In the more recent fire in the Convention Centre in Auckland, as soon as the flames found another piece of combustible material there was another flare up and more areas for the firemen and women to try and extinguish.
In the Bible, in the Book of James, in the New Testament, a comparison is drawn between one of the smaller parts of the body, the tongue and a small spark that can start a forest fire.
James said that if a person can control their tongue, they can control their entire body. He illustrates this principle, first with a horse, and then with a ship. Once the bit is in the horse’s mouth, the rider can control the entire body of the horse.
A sailing ship can be very large and strong winds propel it; but when the captain has control of its very small rudder (comparatively speaking), they have control of the entire ship. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the tongue could be easily controlled?
Tongue movements and coordination of these movements are crucial to speech development and clarity, but it is so easy for ‘‘stuff’’ to come out of our mouths. Once spoken, the words can never be taken back. An apology can be given, if it is obvious that what we have said is offensive or hurtful, but there is no way the words can be erased forever.
Of course, words, just like fires, do have practical, good uses. They enable us to communicate, support, encourage and build up one another. Fires also have practical uses, they provide warmth, can be used to cook with, provide propulsion, melt metals and so on. The life cycle of some plants indicate that fires at least every 20 years are necessary to maintain some ecosystems.
However, I wonder if we are careful enough with the words we say – be it to family, friends, work colleagues or those we meet casually or socially? Do we realise what a huge ‘forest fire’ might be started as a result of us being careless with our speech?
Can we be bothered being ‘nice’ to one another, or do we have no filter or only a partial filter monitoring what we say. Do we think it is their problem if they take offence to our unkind or inappropriate words?
Each of us could help to make the world a better place if we continually thought about what we say, who we say it to and how we say it. Let’s not be responsible for any (verbal) forest fires and the resulting damage.