Thursday Devotional...5/30/13

Oh, for a New Verb

I have always loved words, their meanings, usage and how definitions have changed through the years. Right now, I am fascinated with one of the growing trends in word evolution, verbifying, or the “verbing” of nouns.

Many nouns have enjoyed dual meanings for centuries, like garden – you can have a vegetable garden and you can garden in your garden. But recently, words which never had any intention of being a verb have morphed in common usage from nouns to “action” words.

The obvious example of “verbing” is Google, which started its humble life as the name of a company and now has come into common usage as the action of searching the internet for information. You can also RV, text, journal, dialogue and even guilt someone. You can also verbate, meaning to recite or write something word for word. Of course, verbate is not a real word, or I should say, wasn’t a real word, because folks are now verbating all over the place. 

Theologian Mary Daly wrote, “Why indeed must God be a noun? Why not a verb…the most active and dynamic of all?”

And, why not, indeed? If any noun, especially the greatest proper noun of all, deserves “verbing”, it is God.

I strolled through the first six chapters in Psalms and found God knowing, scoffing, giving, shielding, lifting, answering, sustaining, arising, saving, blessing, relieving, hearing, making, creating, redeeming, hating sin, destroying evil, leading, sheltering, surrounding, rebuking, chastening, healing, rescuing and saving. And that’s only six small chapters out of the 1,189 in the Bible. Our God is a very active God.

And Jesus came to seek and save (Luke 19.10,) preach the good news, proclaim and release the captives, recover sight to the blind, set free the downtrodden, proclaim the Lord (Luke 4.18,) bring in everlasting righteousness (Dan. 9.24,) render Satan powerless (Heb. 2.14,) give eternal and abundant life (John 10.10,) sacrifice his life for us (John 10.11,) and redeem us from sin (Eph. 1.7.) His entire being was focused on the actions necessary to achieve the will of God on earth.

I realized that the God of heaven, and the Jesus who walked on this earth, are never inactive. They are a constant force and a purpose in action.

When I seek God in my life, I am asking for His activity. I am “Goding” my intentions and requesting the Lord to “Holy Spirit” me. When I pray, I “God” my family and others in need. In doing so, I am asking for all God is, and is doing, to be actively operating in our lives and in the situations we face.

Sometimes, my daughter explains to people what I’m doing by saying, “Just go with it. Mom’s got to “Jesus” it, first.” It used to really bug me when she said this, but now I think she just may have the right idea. 

Jody Ward