Gouda!

On rare days during my chemotherapy, I got to leave my room and go downstairs for lunch to the Spice of Life Cafe. One day they had an elegant spread of different cheeses. One of them I sampled was Gouda. Here's why.

Maybe twenty years ago I was with my whole family at a gathering where we were enjoying appetizers. Among the tidbits was Gouda cheese. Upon seeing it, one of my brothers called out, "Gooo-dah!" His enthusiastic endorsement planted itself in my mind.

Several times since then I have been in cheese shops, pondering over what to buy. And several times my eyes have fallen upon round chunks of Gouda cheese covered with red wax. Immediately my brother's voice has echoed in my mind, "Gooo-dah!" Every time I have acted on this prompt and bought some Gouda, I have not liked it as well as other varieties of cheese. Nevertheless, I tend to keep trying it from time to time over the years. The day I tried it in Spice of Life Cafe, I didn't like it either.

What a lesson here! My brother's voice, vivid with expression, has more influence on me than does my own experience. And that influence has extended over two decades.

Truly our ability to form words, and to deliver them with memorable non-verbal flavor, is a most powerful endowment. We exercise it for better or for worse. The ancient wisdom within the Bible speaks of this responsibility:

"Let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but only what is good for building others up, according to their needs."
"...men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken."
"Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O God."