There lies a ghost town called the Zone. It is one of the most uninhabitable places on earth because it is poisoned virtually for eternally. An event occurred 30 years ago that locals refer to as 26. They call it that because it happened on April 26, much like people refer to the terrorist attack of 9/11. 26 is the nickname for the most devastating disasters in history. An entire town was evacuated because of an invisible poison released into the air. The Zone is a 20 mile no-man’s land littered with the shadow of everyday lives. You see most ghost towns having remaining structures, but people have packed up their belongings and departed. The Zone leaves clothes, briefcases, children’s toys, homework, bicycles; cookware just abandoned…abandoned for 30 years because of the poison that doesn’t die. An amusement park was just built and scheduled to be open in a few days when the event occurred. Back in 1986, we tried to contain the poison in a large sarcophagus, a tomb. But it wasn’t enough. Engineers today say there is still enough poison in there to cause widespread contamination. Too much of this invisible airborne poison can kill a person in days. Victims describe their faces feeling like pins and needles and the taste of metal in their mouths. For the last five years, 1400 workers and funding from 40 different countries have been building an engineering effort the likes of which the world has never seen. They are building a dome taller than the statue of liberty and wider than the Yankee stadium – the largest movable structure on earth. Billions of dollars being spent because of one day 30 years ago. This is the city of Pripyat where the population was 50,000 people and today is zero. This is the event the rest of the world knows as Chernobyl. One of the Call of Duty games has Chernobyl as a map so users can virtually explore the remains. Sure enough there are bumper cars and a Ferris wheel that have never been used. The invisible poison is radiation that comes from plutonium. The half-life of plutonium is 24,000 years. That’s 320 lifetimes. It’s invisible and slowly killing living things. Thousands have lost their lives in the aftermath of Chernobyl and thousands more have developed thyroid cancer. Chernobyl is for us an illustration of the destructive nature of careless words.
James declares that the tongue is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. Deadly means that our tongues have the power to kill. I’ve heard people gloat and brag about how they say what their thinking. I speak my mind. I tell it like it is. We are all entitled to our opinions, are we not? James would throw caution at this rationality. What you say brings either life or death….builds up or tears down…. encourages others or discourages others…
There is a recent movement against bullying in schools. Bullying for the most part is hurtful words that in some instances lead victims to take their own life or the lives of others. Words that sting, cut, bruise, and slowly absorb into our thinking. Words that bring death… an invisible poison. Did you know that half of suicides in young people are related to bullying. HALF! That’s 2,200 deaths a year according to the CDC. Chernobyl.
The good news for us is that Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. Human speech is qualified by the creative and saving Word of God. A word that was destroyed but lives still. A word that destroyed death and carries life and not just any life, but life eternal. 24,000 years is a long time (some might argue eternal) but in actuality is a blink of the eye in comparison to the Word eternal. Thanks be to God!
