Responsibility=respond with your ability. Not bad start for a Sunday morning! I like words and how they mean what they mean. It's evident that the world in which we live have many different interpretations of what words mean. There is even more difference when we put them in different languages. Foreign words pack more into a couple of letters more than English. Then again a simple stroke of the pen brings a blessing or a curse. Words are here to stay. There are countries where to utter certain words mean arrest or possible death. Words can help you calm down and become very angry. Sometimes words leave us feeling intimidated either because we do not know it's definition and other times when we know the definition.
I'm reminded of a story in the Bible. Moses was tending the sheep when he noticed that there was a bush burning but not being consumed. Curious and desirous of understanding he went up to the bush where he met God. Burning bushes and not being consumed by the fire aren't in our dictionary. It was there at the bush that God introduced himself to Moses. When asked by Moses what should he say when asked who sent him to rescue the people; God said, "I am." Moses probably twisted his head to the side and couldn't wrap his head around the response. Why? Because he was raised outside the faith of the Israelites.
You can almost hear and feel the weight of those two words. Good weight. There is only one God. So, when asked by Moses to give a name there must have been a pause while God and Moses waited for the answer. Since there was no other god than God; the answer was simple and complex at the same time. "I am." was more than fitting. Who is God? "I am." replied God. That's right, he was saying he was God. What else could he be called? Since there were no other gods, God was.
I'm reminded of a song by Johnny Cash called "A man named Sue!". The song was a great hit and even as I'm writing I am reliving the words of that song. While there are many names that can be used by either men or women; there is no "Sue". When we use words in this context we are left wondering what business that word has in what's being said. We do similarly with names that we give our children along with their pet names. "Little man." "Little buddy." "Baby girl." and, well the list could be quite long. Suffice it to say that words convey what we think and feel. I've made the mistake of saying my ex wife's name when introducing my new wife to someone. You don't do that more than twice!! Sometimes "Honey" is the best choice.
When I use words that others don't understand I put a wall up in conversation with that person. Sending people from a meeting back to their cubicles to look up words is not productive. I was told before I became a pastor that by the time I had finished my Masters degree that I would have a vocabulary of 15,000 words. The average amount of words of most people is 5000. Somewhere between my graduation and my first sermon I needed to lose 10,000 words. How we are raised and where we are raised brings potential problems with different places in our world. Add accents and other particularities and we complete the complex picture we carry into our world.
So, who is the burden on to know what others think, say and mean when they use any certain word in conversation. If I don't do this task, it's my fault. I need to be the one who should seek to understand and to be understood. If everyone took this lead position the world would have less problems. That's because we took the time to get out of our box, put the time and energy into understanding the culture around us and the people represented. I would urge you to take the time to invest yourself into the world others in your life represent. It's truly then that we can "become all things to all people." Besides, it's cool!
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