I was shocked when I read about a web site called InformationAgePrayer.com that offers, for people too busy to speak to God themselves, a daily service of invocations using voice-synthesizing software. Each prayer is voiced individually with the subscriber's name on the screen, and set up for the individual specific beliefs. (For Muslim prayers, the computer's speakers point toward Mecca) The cost varies depending on the type of prayer. (Hail Marys are 70 cents a day, the Lord prayer or Islamic Fajr is $3.95 a month.) As I read about this service, I couldn’t help but think about what Jesus said in Matthew 6:7, “But when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.” It probably wasn’t what Jesus had in mind when he uttered those words but it sure fit. We are to a continually praying people but not at the expense of meaningful prayer. True prayer requires the heart of man not just a voice.
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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