Today's blog comes from The One Year Daily Grind, by Sarah Arthur. There's no way I could have said it better, so I'm just copying it here.
We humans are made in the image of God, which means we're created to make things, just as our Creator does. We're made to play.
Many of us have some kind of hobby or creative medium, such as playing the guitar or dancing or oil painting. My hobby also happens to be my vocation: creative writing. Unlike many hobbies, which are expensive, the great thing about creative writing is that words are cheap. In fact, most of the time, they're free. If you can speak, read, and write, then you can do this hobby anytime, anywhere, without having to purchase, say, 250 pounds of words the way my friend Catherine, a potter, has to purchase 250 pounds of clay. Words are cheap, which is why it's so easy to treat them casually. It's easy to write emails and text-message each other without really paying attention to the words we're using.
But we must never forget that words also have power. In ancient times, to know the name of something was to have power over it, which is why Adam could name the animals in Genesis 2:19-20 but Jacob was no told the name of the angel who wrestled with him in Genesis 32:22-30.
One of the ways we try to have power over things is by labeling them with adjectives: poor, rich, smart, slow, geeky, hot, black, white - including the word Christian. For some reason, we think that if we can discern whether or not something is "Christian," then we've got it figured out, then we know whether or not it's "safe." This is true for things like "Christian" music, "Christian" clothing, "and yes, even "Christian" books. But take it from a word-geek:
The word Christian isn't meant to be an adjective. It's a noun. So inanimate objects aren't Christian. We are. How does this change the way we use that word?
We humans are made in the image of God, which means we're created to make things, just as our Creator does. We're made to play.
Many of us have some kind of hobby or creative medium, such as playing the guitar or dancing or oil painting. My hobby also happens to be my vocation: creative writing. Unlike many hobbies, which are expensive, the great thing about creative writing is that words are cheap. In fact, most of the time, they're free. If you can speak, read, and write, then you can do this hobby anytime, anywhere, without having to purchase, say, 250 pounds of words the way my friend Catherine, a potter, has to purchase 250 pounds of clay. Words are cheap, which is why it's so easy to treat them casually. It's easy to write emails and text-message each other without really paying attention to the words we're using.
But we must never forget that words also have power. In ancient times, to know the name of something was to have power over it, which is why Adam could name the animals in Genesis 2:19-20 but Jacob was no told the name of the angel who wrestled with him in Genesis 32:22-30.
One of the ways we try to have power over things is by labeling them with adjectives: poor, rich, smart, slow, geeky, hot, black, white - including the word Christian. For some reason, we think that if we can discern whether or not something is "Christian," then we've got it figured out, then we know whether or not it's "safe." This is true for things like "Christian" music, "Christian" clothing, "and yes, even "Christian" books. But take it from a word-geek:
The word Christian isn't meant to be an adjective. It's a noun. So inanimate objects aren't Christian. We are. How does this change the way we use that word?
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