Today, I was asked to help a girl with her pronunciation of English words. Of course, I obliged. She wanted to read the Bible to help us with this which, in retrospect, surprises me because I found out later that her family is Buddhist.
Before we started, she asked me if I read the Bible. I responded with, "Everyday." She asked me what I had read today which was Acts 3. She said, "Okay! Let's read that" in her Vietnamese accent. So…that's what we did.
The first part of Acts 3 talks about God healing the lame beggar through Peter (John was there, too). At the end of of the passage, it says that the people who recognized the beggar "were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him."
She was struggling with the word "amazement", so we repeated it a few times. Then, she asked me a question. "Why do English people say 'amazing' so much? I hear them say that a book is amazing or their mother is amazing or their food is amazing."
It made me think about something. It made me think just how abusive we are with the English language. We use such strong words to describe such menial things. How I am supposed to explain that God healing a lame man is amazing when I use the word to describe the iced coffee sold on the streets of Vietnam?"
She asked me another question, "Do you like it when people call you amazing?" I thought about it and said, "No. I think there is only one truly amazing individual and that is God. I am just a human like everyone else."
I have been convicted to save such fearful words as "amazing" and "awesome" for the One who truly is. The more I use words like these to describe such frivolous things, the harder it is to understand what truly is amazing.
God is amazing. His works are amazing. Everything else pales in comparison.
