A Hot Time and Its Origin

Do you remember this old camp song?

Late last night, while we were all in bed,

Mother O'Leary took the lantern to the shed,

And when the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said,

"There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight!"

The infamous Mrs. O'Leary and her cow

I thought of that song when I realized that yesterday, October 8, marked the one hundred fifty-fifth anniversary of a historic tragedy, the Great Chicago Fire.

I don't remember that event. I'm old, but not that old!

Despite various speculations and the lyrics of that little song, the actual cause or origin of the fire was never conclusively determined. The cow, or Mrs. O'Leary's carelessness, became an easy scapegoat for the fire that presumably started on DeKoven Street. What we do know is that the resulting conflagration had catastrophic consequences for an awful lot of people.

Devastation caused during the Great Chicago Fire, October 8, 1871

More important than the effects of the fire on property was its effect on people.

More than 300 people were killed in the fire, and 90,000 were left homeless. The fire leveled 3.5 square miles of real estate, 17,450 buildings were destroyed, and total losses of more than $200 million (about $5.5 billion in today's money) were incurred.

Can you imagine the impact such a fire would have if it occurred today?

As I thought about that terrible event, however, my thoughts drifted to something that is potentially even more destructive than such a fire, and that's the human tongue. Our tongues. My tongue. Your tongue. The words we speak. And by extension, we could say the same thing of our written as well as our spoken words.

James the Apostle wrote, "If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man and able also to bridle the whole body" (James 3:2). But we all know that no one is perfect, so what he has to say applies to all of us.

He pointed out that man has learned to control other powerful things--horses with bridles, ships with rudders, etc. But no man can totally control the tongue. Then he explained why the tongue is so dangerous: "The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity; ... it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.... The tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God, ... and therewith curse we men.... These things ought not so to be" (James 3;3-10).

Mrs. O'Leary would have been wise to have been more careful about where she set her lantern down. And we each must beware of our words. They can either help or harm others. And who knows what a great conflagration a careless word might create, what harm it might do to someone else.

Our daily prayer should be that which David prayed: "Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips" (Psalm 141:3). Only in that way can we prevent our words from causing a destructive fire.