One summer in my teen years, a group of us were discussing religion. The conversation had started when my friends had asked me where I had been that morning. I had told them I had gone to church, and one of the girls told me she would have gone but her “church” didn’t have service that day. When I asked why her why, her response was, “Well we take off from services in the summer, since everyone is so busy and traveling it’s just easier to not have church.” Even to this day that answer still blows my mind. I guess at least it was honest. Unfortunately, many wouldn’t officially adopt the policy but do the same thing in practice. Summer vacations and recreation pull people away from regular attendance. The worship of God and the building up of his people is something He has commanded us to do, not just when it is easy or convenient but each week. A true relationship with God is not something we should ever “take off” from.
Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...
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