Ever thought about how many people are killed by animals every day? Steve Jenkins collects these kinds of statistics. Following is a list of the top nine animal killers on the planet—and how many they kill in an average day:

• Crocodiles, 3
• Roundworm, 5
• Tsetse Fly, 25
• Assassin Bug (Gotta love that name), 30
• Dogs, 150 (through physical attack or spreading disease)
• Freshwater snail, 275 (they spread many deadly diseases)
• Snakes, 275
• Mosquitoes, 2,500
• Ironically, sharks—among the most feared of all creatures—kill only one person every month or two. *

Were you surprised by that list? I sure was.

After all, who's afraid of a teeny snail? Probably not you. But in a given day, they kill as many people as snakes do! Ironically, the prize for the deadliest goes to the smallest: the mosquito, of which there are an estimated 110 trillion buzzing around the planet. And every last one of them is a potential carrier of that lethally infectious disease, malaria. 

Biblically speaking, the same idea applies to people like you and me. Though our fists might prove deadly in a fight, we kill far more with something much smaller—our tongue.

We’ve all heard that the tongue has the potential for great destruction. But that’s way too kind an assessment. The tongue—my tongue—is a killer. It’s a weapon for murder! Yours, too.

• Proverbs 12:14 warns us, "Reckless words pierce like a sword."
• Proverbs 12:18 calls the tongue “a scorching fire.”
• James 3:8 says, "it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison."

This is exponentially more serious than “mere” offense!

This is the stuff of murder!

So, if our tongues are so deadly, what's the answer? In Psalms 141:3, David prayed, "Set a guard, LORD, over my mouth. Keep watch over the door of my lips." Isn't that precisely what we need—a guard over our mouths and a sentry securing the "door of our lips"? 

Lord, we want this. We need this! And we need it today!

Set a guard over my mouth, Lord.

Keep watch over the door of my lips.

Amen!

*Source: Steve Jenkins, One Day By the Numbers, Clarion Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright © 2022 

Image by Franco Patrizia from Pixabay