Today in schools kids are bullied and laughed at and excluded from being part of the group. Rejection and humiliation causes loneliness, isolation and anxiety, and this causes depression. Depression causes pain. When we think of pain, we think of the pain that comes after a surgery, or the pain of breaking one’s arm, but did you know that people who suffer from depression feel pain? “Yes,” real pain. It is not their imagination. There is a pain that cuts to the heart of a person who has depression. It tears at their soul, it causes fatigue and the stress that brings about illness. When we say things to hurt people, we are doing more than hurting their feelings, those words are bringing illness to that person’s mind, soul and body.
Proverbs 12:18 tells us this, “Speak without thinking, and your words can cut like a knife. Be wise, and your words can heal.”
There is a song by Kaitlyn Marie Oliveveira called “Words Can Hurt.”
There is a part of the song that says, “I know how it feels, how it feels to hurt inside. I know how it makes you feel like your nothing and I know what it makes you think and I know what it makes you do, but just know that from the start you are someone special to me, so keep your head up high, you’re strong enough to try to fight and to defeat. Yea, I know it’s hard to not give up because words, words, words can hurt.”
There was a saying back when I was a kid, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me.” But this saying is not so, because words and names can harm us more than a stone or a stick thrown at us. Yes, we are supposed to forgive one another, but it is very hard to forget, because the pain that is in that person’s heart, never goes away. Today if you’re not in the right group, then you are a nobody and nobodies are laughed at and mocked and harassed. But the person with depression can only go so far, take so much and then they contemplate things like suicide. Now I ask you, “Do you want this on your conscience, that you caused someone to kill themselves? Could you live with that pain for the rest of your life? Today, reach out to people at school who are bullied or humiliated because the truth is, they are not any different than you are. We, in so many ways, are all different and yet, we are all still the same…human!
There is a song by the Newsboys United called “Love One Another” and it goes like this – “Yeah we don’t always live what we believe. Yeah we don’t always share a common source. Here we are, now shouting ‘til we’re hoarse. Jesus taught us a different kind of discourse. Don’t talk about it, talk about it. Just do it. Love one another sister and brother. Don’t hurt each other, yeah. Lines drawn in the sand. Complicate our new command. Love one another. Yeah.”
Just do it! Love one another!