I love soup; always have. And pretty much any kind of soup. I'm not sure I've found one yet that I don't like. And it doesn't have to be cold outside, either. No matter the weather, I always enjoy a bowl of soup.

It has become even more significant these past few months as Melissa and I have been on a quest to eat healthier. Not only does soup make for a quick dinner, but it's one of those things that you can make at home much healthier than what you find at the store. Since we control the ingredients, we can load it up with as many vegetables as we want, take advantage of lean protein and keep the sodium to a minimum. I took that to a new level when I started making soup base.

After experimenting with different types of soup, I decided that I could save us even more time as we considered dinner each night. So about every three weeks or so I make a Crock Pot full of soup base. I chop up a full head of cabbage, de-stem a large bag of fresh spinach, cover it with chicken broth and seasoning, and let it cook all day. The vegetables cook down, and we end up with a delicious soup base that we can doctor up in a variety of ways on the fly. I freeze it in two-serving containers, and all we have to do is pull it out of the freezer in the morning on our way out the door, and presto! Dinner comes together in just a few minutes.

The system has worked well for us, but it was not without its hiccups. The first time I was planning to make the big batch of soup base, I was in a quandary as to how to freeze it. Most of our leftover containers were too small for what we needed, and we didn't have that many of the larger ones. I was musing about it one night as Melissa and I went to bed. I was going to make the soup base the next day and really wanted to figure out the freezer issue.

As we lay there after turning off the lights, I was just thinking out loud. “I'm going to end up with four or five batches of the base, so I have to figure out what to put it in so we can thaw them separately,” I reasoned. “I thought about those sherbert containers that we have, but I'm not sure if they are freezer safe.”

It took me a minute. To her credit, Melissa didn't say anything; she just let me think for a moment about what I'd said. Finally I got it.

I have a tradition of buying Melissa orange or lime sherbert when she is feeling under the weather. It comes in a plastic container with a snap-on lid, and we typically hold on to them once she has finished the sherbert. We have a stack of them in a cabinet.

Like I said, I finally got it. Those containers were designed to hold food that remains frozen. That's what they are made for. I finally realized that I sounded like an idiot.

As gaffes go, it wasn't a big deal. More funny than anything else, and we shared a laugh there in the dark. But it got me thinking. I figured out the mistake pretty quick. I may have sounded like an idiot, but I really did know that a container made to store frozen sherbert would be freezer safe. I just spoke without thinking, as we all do from time to time.

And that's the point. We all speak without thinking sometimes. And, with the proliferation of Social Media in our lives, we sometimes write and post without thinking. We say or post the first thing that comes to our minds, often driven by emotion. And sometimes that first thing proves to be hurtful, divisive or just plain wrong. Face it, we all do it.

And I can't help but believe our world would be a better place, our relationships more solid and perhaps our culture more united if we took the time to think before we express ourselves. If we took the time to cool off -- or at least think through the ramifications of what we are expressing.

Many years ago, I was a member of a couple of different Rotary Clubs, both in Texas and in Illinois. Rotary -- like the Lions Club or Optimist Club or any number of similar service organizations -- does great work for the communities in which it exists. But one of the things that really stuck with me was something we recited together at each meeting. It was called the Rotary Four-Way test, and it served as the guiding principle for the things that Rotarians said or did. It went like this:

1. Is it the truth?
2. Is it fair to all concerned?
3. Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
4. Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

The implication is that if the answer to any of those questions is no, then perhaps you should keep your thoughts to yourself. It's not exactly biblical, I know. But from this pastor's standpoint, they are pretty good words to live by.

See you Sunday.