A meme is created on the internet today - it gets 10 likes and 1 share. The person who it was shared with gets 15 likes and one share. That share gets 20 likes and 2 shares. One of those shares gets 14 likes and the other gets 10 likes. The one that gets 14 likes gets 1 share. This share gets 8 likes, no shares. That's a total of 91 people affected by that meme. Let's just say that 16 of the people who see this meme are offended, 25 are unsure what it means, 50 people think it's funny, and for 7 of them it turns an otherwise dreary day into a good one. 1 person who sees it actually finds it's message so true to life that they actually change the way they behave because of it. Let's say that meme took 5 minutes to imagine, and 5 minutes to create. 10 minutes just affected almost 100 lives, and changed 1 in a serious, long-term way. One simple action can have great power.
Imagine that you are on a campout, and you want to start a fire. You gather some small sticks, some larger sticks, some logs. You take your match and strike it. You place it at the bottom of your carefully constructed stack. It lights up until the whole pile of wood is aflame. If one person touches that fire even for a second, it burns them. If they touch it for a few seconds, it gives them severe burns. If they were to leave their hand in it for a long enough time, their hand would never heal.
The Bible tells us, "Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!" (James 3:5) I think this is a very profound bit of scripture. If we were to think of our words and the messages we send as a fire, how much more careful we would be about what we communicate to others. Things we say have powerful, long-term ripple effects. They can comfort us, make us laugh, and inspire us, but they can also discourage us, frustrate us and deceive us. They can even change a life, for the better or for the worse, for years to come, even for an entire lifetime.
