Radio
Leicester Thought for the Day
©
John Denney, 23 November 2001
Well, oo-er.
Our Prime Minister has got a blind spot about spelling the word
“tomorrow”. He spells the “to” bit with
two Os. At least he did – three times - in a personal
letter that got into the news. Whoops! Actually
“tomorrow” is one of the most commonly mis-spelt words.
Poor old Tony. I wouldn’t want to exaggerate, but
it’s necessary to point out that it’s definitely an embarrassment
to get the beginning of the word “tomorrow” wrong.
That’s six of the most difficult words. Spot them?
Spell them? Exaggerate; necessary; definitely; embarrassment;
beginning; tomorrow. And can anyone tell me the right way to
spell “withhold”? One H or two, it never looks
right.
Spellings are
only wrong when they flout a convention. There is no law
about it. We spell “colour” with a U, but our
American cousins get on perfectly well without it. What
about bough, cough, dough, lough, and rough? All of
‘em spelled with o-u-g-h. There’s no logic.
Words, even
beautiful sounding words, can sometimes pose a problem. When
I was about ten or eleven years old, I concluded I would never
get to heaven. The reason was that I used to read the
Authorised or King James Version of the Bible, translated into 16th
Century English. And I used to love the sound of the
language, and all the “Thees” and “thines”
and “begats” and “behoveths”, which amounted
to something like a secret code that I loved to try to crack.
A verse in Mark’s gospel really threw me, though. It
said “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the
kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter
therein.” Well, I was no longer a little child, and I
hadn’t received the Kingdom of God while I was a little
child, so it was too late, or so I thought. I had
understood the little word “as” to mean
“while”. But translated into modern English, the
verse says, “I tell you the truth, anyone who will not
receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter
it”. Like a little child, not while a
little child. Hallelujah!: I was allowed in!
So it’s not
too late for anyone to come into the kingdom of God. All it
needs is the simple trusting accept-it-at-face-value faith of a
little child. No quibbles about the spelling or the
grammar, no discussion about the logic, just an acceptance of
God’s love. How about receiving the kingdom today?
For tomorrow never comes.