The Power of Words

Nothing is written. Yet. But the possibilities are infinite. I stare at a blank white page and wonder at the power of words. They unravel the folds of the human mind and lay open the chambers of the human heart. They hold the power to connect, to bind separate entities through the shaping of the mouth or the shaping of the pen.
Words.
Simple or complex.
Like colors on a palette, painting worlds and stories. With a single word a universe is born, bursting forth from nothingness. I am an image-bearer in this. It meets some strange need I have deep in my core. To create. With words.

But words are dangerous too. They easily entangle; they get stuck sometimes. Come out wrong. Say what I didn’t mean to say, and mean what I didn’t want to mean. They have a will of their own if I lack the brush to stroke them.

Words have the power to kill. To sever. To wound.
Destroy.

“Your mommy passed away,” he said, sitting in front of me, this intimate stranger. His eyes were pools of darkness and I felt myself sinking into them. “She’s gone.”

She's gone. Two simple words that sent a child’s world into dizzying chaos. Two words that severed my past from my future and at once divided who I would have been from who I have become. Two words that ripped everything away, in an instant, and left me irreparably broken. I have not been whole since they were spoken.

I know full well the power of words.

But in that scandalous power there is also beauty. The words form a story. My story. Yours. And a greater one than either of those - a story that began when the first Word breathed life into the cosmic formlessness.
I will read it after the last word is written and I will marvel at the Author.
I marvel now. I see the story everywhere. It’s inside of me. And I in it.
Words were spoken, and out of vast emptiness comes fullness.
What was dead comes to life.
Starting anew.

I stare at a blank white page and I wonder.