January 29, 2001
DOWN HOME:
Definitions offer families meaning of life's terms
___Everybody seems to talk from a different dictionary.
___Like a few Sundays ago, when Lindsay had to wake up at 8 a.m. in order to get to church on time.
___"I wish we didn't have to get up so early," she declared.
___"How do you define 'early'?" I asked, genuinely curious.
___"Anything before 10," she replied.
___Does my daughter have teenhood down, or what? If I shake the synapses of my brain, Ialmost can remember what that was like--when getting up at 7:45 for an 8 o'clock college class seemed like torture.
MARV KNOX
Editor
___Now, I get up at 5 or 5:15 most mornings, and sleeping until 7:45 seems like bagging in 'til noon.
___Of course, Lindsay and her sister, Molly, also don't agree with my definition of "early" for bedtime, either. But I get tired just thinking about it.
___Most of the time, I stay confused about the meaning of plain words. Among members of a family, they always seem to mean different things for different people.
___Take "dirty," for example.
___A car that looks dirty to me looks just fine to my wife, Joanna. And by the time she says the car is dirty, I can't remember what color it is.
___Of course, in my house, I'm a minority of one, and Jo, Lindsay and Molly probably would tell you I'm reading a dictionary I wrote myself.
___The girls write me off as an old coot, comfortable with archaic meanings of words--like "early," "dirty," "funny" and "late." As for Jo, she's sure I'm just an obsessive/compulsive Type A nut who must've been potty-trained at gunpoint.
___Unfortunately, home isn't the only place where folks don't agree on the meaning of words. Church comes readily to mind.
___What do you mean by "worship"? For some of us, worship involves singing from the 1956 Baptist Hymnal and listening to a three-point sermon whose points all begin with the letter "P." For others, it's singing brand-new praise choruses and watching a skit.
___Churches also don't seem to agree on the definition of "missions," at least when they talk about their budgets. For some, "missions" means just about anything but staff salaries and the light bill. For others, it means ministry beyond the walls of the church. And for still others, it means taking the gospel throughout the state, across the nation and around the globe.
___Ultimately, the measure of our lives will be determined by how we adhere to God's definitions. Words from the prophet Micah particularly are helpful: "What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
___No matter how we define them, God's definitions of "justice," "mercy" and "humility" matter most.
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