In the novel, "The Country of the Pointed Firs," a woman notices a number of painted wooden stakes around the property of a retired she captain, Elijah Tilley. She asks the captain why those wooden stakes are driven in the ground. Tilley tells her that when he first bought the farm and plowed the ground, every once in a while his plow would snag on the large rock underneath the surface of the ground. The snags not only slowed his progress but dulled his plow. So he put up stakes to show where the underneath rocks relocated so he could avoid them. The author says that’s what the 10 Commandments are all about. God has said that these are trouble spots in life. Avoid them and you will not snag your plow.
“To say the right thing at the right time, keep still most of the time.” John W. Roper Those who get in trouble most often are those cannot seem to keep still, remain silent. Life teaches many lessons. Among the best lessons of life is one my father taught me at an early age was, “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing.” The contributions we make to life via our mouth are many and varied. Most of the time, I reckon, they are not contributions at all, but things that diminish the richness of life.
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