Guess what? I am a literal person. I guess it’s true to say that I was born this way and, therefore, I’ve always been this way. As true as that is I don’t have any recall of that detail ever being mentioned to me as a child. Nope! No memory at all of my mother or father every saying, “You are so literal!” “Stop being so literal!”

I was well into my adult years before I became aware of the word and its application to me. The sad thing is, most of the time I’m left feeling stupid for simply thinking the way that I think. It’s like telling a leopard he’s spotted and then looking at him like he’s stupid for being that way. Like, “Come on! You know better!”

Too often, I allow stinking thinking to rob moments of life from me because I’ll get lost in my head trying to figure out how to not be how I intrinsically am.

Recently, after once again hearing about how literal I was being, I decided to look up the word. As much as I like/love to look up words it had never occurred to me to look this particular word up and so, being the literal person that I am, I loved the definition!

“Literal: in exact accordance with or limited to the primary or explicit meaning of a word or text.”

Yeah!! That’s what I’m talking about. The way our Maker wired this brain of mine, that definition absolutely makes sense!

So, why, why, why am I wasting your time with how “I” am? The answer is simple. We are all some kind of way for one reason: our God and Maker designed us as such to accomplish His will and purpose in the world that would be our sphere of interaction and influence. For His own good pleasure and for His glory we are to be all that we can be, in spirit and in truth, to reflect the image our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the world.

We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. ~Ephesians 2:101

Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. ~2 Timothy 2:14-15

My take away from this is simple: while I’m encouraged by the literal definition of the word, I’m even more encouraged by the Word of God that words matter! And lest you think I’m way too full of myself, know that I also receive a measure of exhortation from the above Scripture. It’s one thing to be literal, and another thing altogether to be so literal as to be argumentative.

So, while my parents never spoke to me about being literal or too literal, it was often heard that I was being argumentative – so much so that I was often told that I should be a lawyer when I grow up.
So, dear one, what is your take away from this devo today?

Stephanie D. Paul
 
Stephanie Paul, wife and mother of two grown children. An “instrument of change” in the Redeemer’s Hand, in the lives of wounded and hurting women. Currently serving as a part of the Addiction Recovery Team at America’s Keswick as Woman of Character Program Director.

1 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+2%3A10&version=ESV
2 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2 Timothy+2&version=ESV