Awesome!

Did you know that today, March 10th, is (was) the International Day of Awesomeness? Isn’t that awesome! Check it out at http://dayofawesomeness.com/ and then come back and read on.

If you read the first page of the website, you would see that the day really has a comical side to it. But still, it also is the straw that broke the camel's back for me in terms of the use of the word itself. Unfortunately, the word awesome must now be entered onto the official list of words whose actual meaning has been dumbed-down, changed, ruined and otherwise rendered unrecognizable because we decided the original definition wasn’t good enough for us.

Awesome! I just got Halo 3. That football game was awesome! If you were to ask someone what the word awesome means, they would tell you that awesome means cool, exciting, or amazing. But the real definition of awesome is an adjective describing awe. Now what is awe?

Awe (noun) - an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like: in awe of God.

Can that definition ever accurately be applied to a sport, a video game, a steak, a TV show, a job, a car, a vacation, a joke, a new computer, my blog, etc?

Think about how awesome God is. Have you ever looked at the night sky in a really dark place? Have you seen one of those science shows showing the process of human conception and development in the womb? Think about God’s plan of redemption? This only scratches the surface.

Our lives are full of all kinds of exciting games, delicious food, entertaining TV shows, interesting jobs, cool cars, fun vacations, funny jokes, fast computers and intellectually stimulating blogs. I for one plan on doing my best to keep the word awesome restricted to describe those things that inspire awe.