A Gentle Tongue Is a Tree of Life

📝Reflection

A tree grows over long years to give people shade and fruit. The Hebrew sage likened gentle speech to such a tree. A warm word, invisible in the moment, grows long inside the listener and becomes a strength that holds them up. This is why some people remember a kind word heard in childhood for a lifetime. A twisted word, by contrast, breaks the spirit, and recovery takes long. Speech seems to vanish in an instant, but it is planted inside a person and grows like a tree. Whether the word I plant in someone today becomes a shade-giving tree or a broken branch depends on the temperature of my tongue.