One of my most memorable cartoon characters is
Pigpen from Charlie Brown. He carried his own atmosphere with him, a dust
cloud. Everywhere he went the cloud went with him. It would arrive a few
moments before he got somewhere and lag a few moments after he left. Some
people carry their mood like they have their own weather system. They enter a
room and the mood in the room changes.
Verses six and seven talk about what kind of
cloud that accompanies both the righteous and the wicked. The righteous carry
around blessings with them. We call this their reputation. Their reputation
paves the way for blessings to come. Blessings are something that get shared.
They overflow and positively affect those around us. You can’t contain a
blessing. I don’t know about you, but I like being around this kind of person.
I feel better about myself and about life after they have been around.
I don’t really like being around people
whose mouths spew ugliness. I don’t care whether it is foul language or foul content;
if I have a choice, I will leave. This kind of cloud pulls the whole crowd
down. It can pull a family down as well.
Have you ever noticed that it can be very
hard to pull a conversation upward, but very easy to turn it downward? Once one
person starts complaining, it seems that everyone follows. It takes very little
to get it started and a whole lot to get it stopped.
And the color of a person’s life does not automatically
change when they die. We call this after effect someone’s legacy. Even the
memory of the righteous person carries a blessing, while the wicked rots. Think
about that for a moment. Have you ever left garbage in a trash can and gone on
vacation. What was it like when you returned? Stink? Crawling, squirming
things, flies? That is what it is like with a wicked person. Even after they
are dead, it can take a while to get things cleaned up.
What kind of reputation do you have? What
kind of legacy do you want to leave behind? Now is the time to do things that
create both.