Cinnamon Rolls

The other day my husband was making homemade cinnamon rolls.  They were fragrant, fluffy and fat.  While he was making the filling, which called for three tablespoons of cinnamon, he stopped to check the recipe.

"That's way too much cinnamon," he thought.  But trying this recipe for the first time, he decided to put in the whole amount.  Thankfully, the recipe called for brown sugar and white sugar as well.  Once cooked, the amount of cinnamon had been just perfect.

Cinnamon is an interesting spice.  It is wonderful baked in things, but by itself it is extremely bitter.  It has an edgy bite that I find unpleasant.  Combine the cinnamon with sugar, and especially with sugar and butter, and you have something extremely delectable.

Our words are like that.

They can be harsh, bitter and edgy if we don't take effort that they are also "with grace."   We have all perhaps had someone say something harsh to us that we have remembered perhaps for years and years.  It seems those things stay with us so much longer than the sweet things, don't they?

The Apostle Paul in both Ephesians and Colossians spoke of what comes out of our mouths.  

"Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers." Ephesians 4:29"Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man." Colossians 4:6

Just as our cinnamon rolls needed the sugar along with the cinnamon, let us be careful that our speech ministers grace to our hearers.  Even if we must say something that is hard to hear, let us not utter it with a hardness of heart, but let us be meek, kind and tenderhearted.  

May our own words coming back to us be a joy and not a sorrow.