Like Nails on a Chalkboard
Three adjectives are worrisome words: amazing, incredible, and awesome. The words have lost their power to impress, describe, or even inform. But not to irritate!
- What is amazing today, really?
- What does incredible mean in times when facts are not required to undergird an assertion?
- What does awesome mean in an age of apathy?
Concisely amazing means “startling impressive.”
You know what amazed me?
When Doug asked me to marry him – that was amazing!
So, too, when God gave us our children, it was amazing.
Oh! but when we held our grandchildren, amazing had untapped dimensions!
Although its synonym is sometimes amazing, incredible means barely credible, absurd, far-fetched.
You know what’s incredible to me? Abortion.
Awesome means fearful; its meaning should evoke terror when we consider the object it modifies. It once was reserved for the emotion that the holy God stirred. But paired with freakin’, awesome now means something we should covet.
You know what’s awesome to me? That every once in a while, God tells me the answer to a question I haven’t asked, because I can’t bring myself to look at what I have done or said that I knew was wrong.
Strong verbs restore purpose to worrisome words – What is amazing? What is incredible? And what is awesome?
God spoke.
He loved.
God gave.
He disciplines.
He is.