This is something new for me and it will be hampered by the fact that I dislike typing on a laptop,but if we don't speak for ourselves others will speak for us and their words will crush us.
Isn't that the most bombastic thing you ever heard?
Can words crush?
yes,because words have weight and power. "In the Begining God said..."
The person who made up the rhyme"Sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me" was no doubt trying to salve a real wound received ,probably by someone he or she loved ...loose words sting and hurt. In fact that old childhood saying is nonesense.
But we have ,as a society,become careless in our speech. Curse words spew out of our mouths endlessly as do blasphemies.Everything is F-this or GD-that. We apply names and designations to people,events and situations with a ridiculous regularity. A large winter storm pattern becomes "Snowageddon"for instance.Think of the silly contrived or inappropiate names for cars and drugs."Tribeca",really?
How about "Avandia"?
What is the sense of naming a car for a charged atom as in "Ion" ?
How did the term "Fundementalist" come to be assigned not to conservative Protestants,who were the first to call themselves that ,but to either the sort of Catholic movement Mel Gibson and his dad are said to support or to the most inane,extreme form of Islam? For that matter,you could imagine my surprise(and chagrin)years ago when ,as a Behavioral Sciences major in college I found that one of the not-very-nice personality types sociologists were using at the time was cxalled "The Fundementalist personality"...which amazed me because some of the nicest and best folks I knew(including my parents)were Fundementalists!
Few people want that designation now...the vague term"Evangelical" is used,instead. This is a shame,but all things change. This is why the Constancy of Christ ,as revealed in the EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS is such an important concept .We are malleable,we do change. Sometimes it is for the better and often it is not,but He stays the same.
And He is called The Word
I retired in 2003 and , in 2004, contracted a virus which had been running through Central Ohio that Fall and had even sidelined a pro ho ckey team! Usually it settled in the stomach and, as I was ill with vomiting ect, I went to see my doctor who treated me with an anti-viral and a nausea-suppressor. But, instead of getting better, I got worse.
ReplyDeleteI was weak, dizzy and terribly thirsty.My throat was always dry. Though I lef an urine sample at the doctor's office, it was never tested because everybody in the waiting room had the "same thing" as me and there seemed to be no need of any realm testing. It was a stomach flu and that was that...until I grew so weak that my wife called 911 and I was loaded into an amulence.
While still in the driveway (and barely aware of what was happening)the EMT thought to test my glucose level. IT WAS 1400 !
At that point my body was shutting down rapidly and I was sped to the ER wshere I ranged in and out of reality for hours as massive doses of insulin bwere administered to me.
It was explained by the attending physician that the virus must have attacked my pancreas.This will sometimes happen that viruses attack variuous interenal organs.In my case, it fried mhy pancreas giving me Type I Diabetes.Thank God, no other organs were harmed and the condition is very manageable.