A person without self-control...

...is like a city with broken-down walls. (Prov. 25:27-28)

It's our custom on Sunday afternoons during lunch to ask Anna Marie what she learned in Kids Church that morning. Sometimes, her memory is right on, and she can tell me the verse right off the bat.

Sometimes, we have to extrapolate what the lesson was about because all she can remember is the object lesson.

One Sunday a few months ago was one of those "steel trap" days. She quoted the verse with no problem.

"A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls."

Oooh. That's a good one. We talked about what the verse means: how that, just like a city (in Biblical times, at least) was left open to all sorts of calamities when its walls were in disrepair, so too we open ourselves up to problems when we don't exercise self-control.

No self-control in the eating department = bigger pants.

No self-control with our tongues = hurt feelings and misunderstandings.

No self-control with our finances = overspending, debt, and sometimes bankruptcy.

No self-control at school = lost recess.

She told me a few nights ago that this verse has really stuck with her, and that it helped her curb her unnecessary talking in the classroom.

I was thinking about this verse on the way to work this morning. I'd actually been thinking about it in relation to several things I'd been exposed to lately, and then I heard a news report about a woman who, as a child, developed a habit for eating foam from couch cushions.

Yes, you read that right. Couch cushions.

She has been eating foam daily for over 20 years, and recently had to be hospitalized because she had a grapefruit-sized blockage in her digestive track. Made of foam.

"A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls."

I see it nearly every day in the media - on the internet - and on Facebook.

Especially on Facebook.

If you are one of my Facebook friends, you might notice that I go several days at a time without updating my status. It isn't that I don't have anything to say - but I would rather not say anything at all, than to post something (just for the sake of posting) which could be misconstrued or hurt someone.

As Anna Marie's second grade teacher admonished, we need to ask ourselves three questions before we say (or write, or post to our Facebook wall) something: Is it true, is it kind, and is it necessary? If it fails any of these three tests, we might need to think twice.

"A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls."

How are your walls holding up today?