My uncle once told me that more than desiring a long life, his desire was to have a good quality of life. In other words, his primary desire was to be healthy in his old age, to be able to travel and do whatever he wanted without being hindered by any ailments or disabilities. To him, living without any physical or mental limitations was more important than living a long life. But I say, “why can’t we have both”? Why can’t we love life and see many good days? Psalm chapter 34, verses 11 through 14 shows us one way that we can have our cake and eat it too if we are willing to seek and pursue it. Its says:
“Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies. Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.”
I agree with my uncle. My desire isn’t really to have “many days” of life. I’d much rather see many good days as outlined in this Psalm. To do this, it says that we need to keep our tongue from evil and from speaking lies; that we are to turn from evil and do good; that we are to seek peace and pursue it. If you think about it, if we are able to do these things, what we are actually doing is managing our stress. If we guard what we say by speaking life with words that uplift; if we avoid divisive speech and telling lies, we will inherently have less stress. It takes work to keep up a lie. As you construct more details about your lies, it will become more difficult to keep things straight and to make sure there are no holes in your story. But if you tell the truth, there is no stress. If you are able to come clean and allow the burden of your secret to be lifted from you, there are no lies to maintain and no added worry from being found out. Evil talk also contributes to stress. Confrontation can heighten your blood pressure and can make you say or do things that you may later regret. By having a calm and peaceful spirit, we can avoid fraying relationships. If you struggle with telling the truth or lashing out in anger with evil or divisive words, I encourage you to diligently appeal to the Holy Spirit. Ask him to change your attitude and your perspective. Allow him to give you a newer purer heart that is less confrontational and less prone to lie. In doing so you may be unwittingly paving the way to seeing many good days in your future.
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The tongue is talked about a lot in the Bible. One reason is because once we say something we can’t take it back. But if we are able to keep our tongue from speaking evil and our lips from telling lies, we will find that with that comes less stress, and with less stress comes many good days of life. Change isn’t something that comes easily to most, but sometimes change is exactly what we need. This Psalm encourages us to turn from evil and do good; to seek peace and pursue it. This isn’t just a good biblical principle to live by, it could mean the difference between living a hard life filled with stress and regret or living a good life filled with many good days.