Thought for Today
Psalm 33:22 Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in you.
Jeremiah 29:11 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.
Matthew 12:21 And in his name the Gentiles will hope."
Romans 5:1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.
Hope is my favorite 4-letter word. Some years ago, at a dinner party, I was asked by one of the diners, “What is your favorite profane word?” I have always suspected that person had read an article which suggested that question as a good way to engage a stranger in conversation. I was forced to awkwardly explain that I had long ago decided not to use profanity in my conversations. It is not that I have never done so, or that I am unfamiliar with profanity or how to use profanity. I was once a teenage boy. I was in a fraternity in college. In my first career, I worked on capital expansion projects and was often on construction sites. I know the words, I merely choose not to use them in conversation.
Generally, when we mention 4-letter words, we mean profanity. Many of those profane words are Anglo-Saxon words which fell into disfavor and disappeared from ‘polite’ discourse following the Norman conquest of Great Britton. They are still maintained by some and their use justified as a way of adding emphasis to the topics or ideas being discussed.
As I matured, however, I realized that I never remembered either of my parents using profanity. I am confident that they both knew the words, understood the meaning of the words, but deliberately chose not to use them. While there were some of my own parents’ parenting techniques and ideas I deliberately chose to discard, this was not one of them. In order to make sure I did not use profanity at home, I simply chose to eschew using it everywhere. I have maintained that habit long after our children have ‘left the nest.’
My habit of not using profanity does make me a bit of an outlier in our current society. Profanity has even entered the realm of print media and broadcast television. Sometimes the 4-letter words are thinly veiled, sometimes they are represented by the first and last letter separated by an asterisk or other symbol. But they have entered the world of ‘polite’ discourse.
There are many 4-letter words in our Bible. Not profane ones, but definitely only 4-letter words. One often read verse at weddings is, “1 Corinthians 13:13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Notice that 2 of those abiding things are spelled with only 4 letters. Love – only 4 letters. Hope – only 4 letters.
Some ministers have a proclivity for the use of polysyllable words. I do try to eschew the use of long or esoteric words. However, as that sentence demonstrates, sometimes I do use them. Paul’s words to the church at Corinth shows us that some extremely important words and some very meaningful theology can be expressed with short, simple words in short, simple sentences.
While I was in seminary, I read a lot of theology. At one point, I began to collect and record the strange, unfamiliar words I encountered. That MSWord file is 6 pages long, 28KB, and includes words such as “apodictic = certain, demonstrably or indisputably true.”
Yet we are able to encapsulate one of the greatest messages of our faith with one simple, short, 4-letter word, hope. My dictionary offers this definition, “hope, Christian – The Christian anticipation of the future as the fulfillment of God’s purposes based on God’s covenant faithfulness and the resurrection of Jesus Christ as known by the work of the Holy Spirit in the church.” (Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, pg. 133) That is quite a mouthful of theology captured by one short, simple 4-letter word . . . and it is extremely powerful and emphatic without being the least bit profane.
We even have a hymn which allows us to sing about our hope, My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less. It begins, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ love and righteousness; I dare not trust this earthly frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.”
There is power in hope. There is comfort in hope. The message of our Christian hope still powers the Church, still spreads the gospel message of God’s love and of God’s Son. A single, short, 4-letter word.
Stay safe, hope, trust God,
Pastor Ray