Some years ago, we had a toaster tragedy in our home. Our toaster sits on our kitchen counter by the refrigerator. As in lots of homes, the top of our refrigerator is like a mini attic, a place to put little things we’ll probably never use again but can’t bring ourselves to toss. For the longest time, one of the things on top of our fridge was a little boxful of magnetic words, the kind you stick on your fridge to string together fun sentences and thinly veiled comments about family members.
I guess it was an accident waiting to happen. Steve went to get something from the cabinet above the fridge one morning and down came the whole box of little magnetic words, right into the toaster below.
The metal toaster.
Do you know how hard it is to get little magnets out of metal toasters? We shook and shook. A few words fell out, but others lodged more deeply inside. I shook out words like drive and guilt and grace and manipulate and gorgeous. I noticed as I kept shaking words out that some of them would wedge up in corners where I could no longer see or get to them.
At the end of all my shaking, I could still see one word in plain view that simply wouldn’t shake loose. The word was “dust.” Until that word comes out, the whole thing is useless. Fire it up and that one little word could start a fire.
I’m talking about the toaster, of course, but maybe I’m talking about life, too.
I wonder how many people in the world have had words dropped into their lives — words like “worthless” or “lazy” or “useless” — that drastically change who they are or how they function? I suspect a lot of us live under the curse of a word wrongly dropped into our spirits. I suspect this because I meet folks like this all the time. They are forty or fifty or sixty and wonder how it is they got so off track with their lives. After enough of a conversation, I hear it. Someone somewhere dropped a word in their toaster, spoke a lie into their spirit. And now, for the presence of an angry word lodged too deeply in their soul, they’ve lost sight of who they are. Or for the lack of a blessing, for the lack of an identity or destiny spoken over their lives, they’ve been derailed.
Sometimes, those words even start fires.
I will say what is stunningly obvious: words have power. They connect or disconnect us to our created purpose. A blessing unleashes destiny. The alternative derails us.
What word needs to be shaken out of you so you can become who you were created to be? What word can you pass along as a new year begins so someone else in your circle is set free?
