Once over the holidays, the family and I traveled up to Denver, Colorado to visit Linda’s sister. The morning after we arrived, a blizzard was forecast. When I awoke early that morning, I could see no trace of snow on the ground but a few flakes were starting to fall. By nine that morning snow covered the ground and we decided we better run the store to pick up some food. By the time we returned an hour later the roads were almost impassable. By that night a foot and a half of snow surrounded the house and all major roads and the airport had been shut down. The next morning the entire city was shut down. No one could get anywhere. It reminded me of what was written in Job 37:6-7 which says, “For to the snow He says, 'Fall on the earth,' and to the downpour and the rain, 'Be strong.' He seals the hand of every man, that all men may know His work.” In spite of all our technology and skill, God was able with simple snowfall to shut down a city in less than a day. The message in a blizzard shows us what a powerful God we serve!
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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