I found an interesting website: Global Language Monitor. “Based in Austin, Texas, the Global Language Monitor collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language. The company is known for its Word of the Year, political analysis, college and university rankings, high-tech buzzwords, and media analytics.”

   “GLM foresees a time in the near future where data doubles every hour, every minute, then every second.”

   According to the Global Language Monitor, as of January 1, 2012, there are 1,010,649.7 words in the English language. Of those, hundreds of thousands are technical and/or scientific terms which are     seldom (if ever) used in spoken language. The 1 millionth word threshold was passed on June 10, 2009 with the addition of the technical word ‘Web 2.0.’ Currently, a new word is created every 98 minutes, averaging 14.7 new words each day.

   You can do the math if you wish, but suffice it to say there are more than a million words in the English language.

   Since our congregation began in 2010, there have been some interesting words and phrases coined. I’m listing them here by the years.

 

In 2010 three new words: Spillcam, Vuvuzela, the Narrative. I have no idea what Spillcam or Vuvuzela means; the Narrative is something like “let’s hear the story.”

2011: occupy, fracking, drone.

2012: apocalypse, Armageddon, deficit, Olympiad.

2013: ‘404’, fail, hashtag.

2014: the heart ♥ emoji for love, hashtag, vape.

2015: microaggression.

2016: a meme, refugee.

2017:truth, narrative, opioids.

2018: the moment, weaponize, truth, narrative, opioids.

2019: woke, consequential.

2020: yeah, you guessed it: COVID.

2021: the numerals – as in, “let’s do the numbers.”

 

   From 2017 to present, the top “UNTRENDING” word is “progress.”  No wonder our world is confused! You may hear the word “progressive” or “progressives,” but not progress. Our world is stagnating despite talk that it’s moving forward.

   I wonder what some of the “new” words or phrases could have been in Jesus’ thirty-three years? How about macroaggression or megaagression; weaponize; truth; “Peace of Rome,” insurrectionist; “Tax Collecting Leaches.”

   As in our world today, the word “truth” is being tested and twisted. Right is wrong and wrong is right. Good is evil and evil is good. Riots are “peaceful demonstrations”; peaceful demonstrations are riots or insurrections. You get the picture, right? Gender confusion; men can have babies. You let your kid choose their own sex even if it conflicts with their biological sex. Women are becoming more masculine while men are becoming effeminate. Children have two mommies or two daddies; or the father is a woman and the mother is a man who have undergone transgendering; so dad is actually the mom and mom is playing the part of a dad.

   There will be some great sorting going on when Jesus returns; like we did on the ranch when we culled the herd. The culls were sent down the road and the rest were kept.

   The words and catch phrases generated in the last few years basically say nothing of great importance; rather, they’re used mostly in negative ways - very few descriptive of anything positive.

   Our world can get pretty dark – even for the Christian. It’s difficult to think of how it all will end. Some folks are losing hope.

But Christians have something the world doesn’t have:

“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.”     -  2 Corinthians 1:8-10

 

Only one word describes our Christian hope: RISEN! Jesus is risen and that makes all the difference to a still-fallen world. He is risen indeed!

 

 

Pastor Fred Westerhold