Running down the stairs

Running down the stairs
The Cockney phrase, ‘up the apple and pears’, is slang for: ‘up stairs’. For instance, if one guy asks the other, ‘where’s ya missus?’ he could answer, ‘up the apple and pears’. When someone is looking for his glasses, but they are already on his nose, the conversation could go as follows: ‘where’s me binocs?’ and the other would answer, ‘on yer I suppose!’
The Greek language often has colourful descriptions behind the words.
For instance, there is a verse of scripture translated into English, do not bite and devour one another, or you might be consumed. The picture behind those words in Greek, are more revealing.
It shows someone running down the ‘apple and pears’ and out of the house!
Words have a powerful effect on us. If words are biting, they might become devouring. Once something has been devoured it is consumed!
By too much criticism, people feel like leaving a house. Children often are made to feel like that by the overbearing parents who forgot what they were like as kids. Their parents treated them harshly and spoke down at them; therefore they treat their children in the same manner. We just can’t help ourselves!
Paul warns us not to exasperate our children with too much correction. We have to create space for them to grow up. That means we need to allow some mistakes here and there and not police them all the time. It takes time for a child to change, yet parents demand immediate change. They must first want to change before they ever will. They must first see the need to change before they want to change.
Children sometimes feel like running down the stairs and out of the house and never coming back! Parents are often the cause. In Scotland children run away from home more than in any other country. I wonder why? Perhaps the parents in Scotland should take a long hard look at how they treat their children and what demands they make of them?
Husbands and wives sometimes treat each other with such harshness that the one or the other wants to run down stairs and out of the house! Unfortunately it can lead to divorce.
A friend of mine, in London, told me about his divorce: ‘One morning I just woke up and said to myself, I don’t want to live anymore!’ Then I asked myself, ‘why not?’ and I could answer it very easily: ‘I had a bully for a father, and I have had a bully for a wife, and I just don’t want to live under a bully any longer!’
I am sure his wife also had her reasons about his ‘emotional instability’. But she did not want to admit was that she was the cause of it in many ways!
Bosses often make their employees run down the stairs and out of the business – they resign and leave. Pastors often make church people run down the stairs and out of the church because of the way they bite and devour the people from the pulpit.
Governments make people leave the country because of their unfair treatment. More than 5 million white South Africans have left the country since the change of government. The pendulum has swung in the other direction after the Apartheid regime.
Sad to say, some desperate individuals who see no other way out, commit suicide because they have been bitten devoured and consumed by others…
Murders are committed because people have had enough.
Sometimes people die of heart failure because they have had it. A teacher at a private school, in his late forties told me a few weeks before he suddenly collapsed and died, ‘I’ve had it in this school!’ Sometimes principals and school systems are too hard on both teachers and scholars – they run down the stairs and out of the school.
And all of us can change the way we speak to each other.
Paul reminds us to let our speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that we may know how to answer anyone who asks us concerning the hope we have in life.
What I remember about people is the way they spoke to me. Some made me feel like a champion and gave me courage to carry on; some made me feel worthless and useless.
Think back about your teachers: which ones do you remember? You remember the ones who tried to speak kindly to you. The ones who ridiculed and humiliated you made you hate their subject.
The sound of the voice is sometimes more important than the message conveyed. The tone of voice carries the feelings behind the words. Let us learn to speak kindly to one another and hopefully make someone’s day memorable and worthwhile.