Your Heart's Scepter (Poem)

Just shy of 4 inches, and weighing about 2 ounces.

Tucked behind a two-row, pearly garrison.

Ever ready to launch words from your heart it fetches.

Well armed to detect sensual perception.

Required for effective oral communication.

Giving voice to your heart’s deepest longings and dreams.

Playing a pivotal role in Christ-centered salvation.

With pivotal roles in life’s good/evil extremes.

If your spirit is the king of your life,

Then this most certainly must be its scepter!

To you, closer than a husband to his wife.

It is your tongue, your heart’s staff and life’s sculptor. ¹

When the conversation topic turns to our tongue,

It is usually our words that become the focus.

But there’s a key role that on this organ is hung.

And it’s a role for which it has a …special fondness.

This other role of which I now speak,

Is simply gaging the tastes of foods we eat.

So it’s your patience I now entreat,

To reveal it’s more than gaging sour-from-sweet.

It is for about 40 hours that foods we eat,

Stay ‘with us’ to do their jobs, good or otherwise.

Afterward, whatever is left over we delete. ²

Thus, our normal biology we optimize.

Forty hours? Please read that once again!

Now let’s compare that to the very few seconds,

That just one bite makes taste buds ping your brain.

Only for ~30 seconds taste buds are awakened.

Yet it is mostly for this tiny interval,

That we base decisions on what we will eat,

Overlooking what’s left in its …wake internal. ³

Yep, taming the tongue, an impossible feat!

‘But no man can tame the tongue’, Jesus’ brother wrote,

‘The tongue is a little member, boasting of great things!’ ⁴

Now tongues/tastes boast of what we toss down our throat,

And of long-term miseries after our taste buds ping.

If in Jesus Christ you have become a new creature,

Then your tongue has a skillful Helmsman.

No longer should taste buds rule as a mighty scepter.

Let Him be your …heart-and-mouth doorman.

When a helmsman signals the direction aimed,

The rudder turns the ship, be it small or great.

Since by no man can your tongue ever be tamed,

Let God’s Spirit guide …what you put on your plate.

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¹ Ever notice the tongue is shaped like a heart ...somewhat?
² Ok, excrete.

³ If you chew one bite of food for about 30 seconds, and it remains in your body for ~40 hours (144,000 seconds), then chewing that bite lasts only 0.02 percent of digestive time, yet taste while chewing is often the biggest factor in deciding what we eat. Imagine that!    

⁴ ‘Indeed, we put bits in horses’ mouths that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. Look also at ships: although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the captain desires. Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Who is wise and understanding among you?’ (James 3:3-9,13) Herein, James speaks of our words. Today, tongues and our taste buds rule our appetites, and thus much of our health, quality of life, and life spans.