When writing, one must be aware of proper word usage and punctuation, otherwise the meaning could be totally misconstrued. A statement such as, “What’s that in the road ahead?” could lose all it’s meaning just by placing a comma in the wrong place, “What’s that in the road, ahead?” I’ve often, over the years, claimed a Freudian slip. My most common is, “Soul (sole) ownership”. It gets me every time. The most common mistake in lengthy writing is excessive repeating of the same word. It can make an article really dull. I came across a short essay the other day discussing one little word and how it can be used to excess if not guarded. The word is “up”.
It’s easy to understand the word “up”, meaning toward the sky, or at the top of the list. But when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake up? At a meeting, why does a topic come up? Why do we speak up? Why do officers come up for election? Why is it up to the secretary to write up a report? We call up our friends and we use humor to brighten up a room. We polish up silver, warm up leftovers and clean up the kitchen. We lock up the house and some guys fix up old cars. At other times this little word has real special meaning. People are known to stir up trouble, line up for tickets, work up an appetite and think up excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed up is special. And this “up” is confusing. A drain must be opened up because it is stopped up. We open up our business in the morning and close it up at night. When it threatens to rain, we say it’s clouding up and when the sun comes out, we say it’s clearing up! When it does rain, it wets the earth and often messes things up and when it doesn’t rain for a long period, things dry up. We seem to be pretty mixed up about “up”! To be knowledgeable about the proper usages of “up”, look the word up in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes up almost ¼th of the page and can add up to about thirty definitions. If you’re up to it, you might try building up a list of the many ways “up” is used. It will take up a lot of your time, but if you don’t give up, you may wind up with a hundred or more. One could go on and on, but I’ll wrap it up, for now my time is up, so it’s time to put up and shut up.
[Ecclesiastes 12: 1-7] A comma is used in a sentence to indicate a pause. A period is end punctuation. It is used to show the end of a sentence. With this idea in mind think on the following quote. “Death is not a period, but a comma, in the story of life.” It says a great deal. It speaks of the immortality of the soul. There is more to man’s existence than life on earth. Man has an immortal soul. Ah, soul and spirit. A couple of words hotly debated, kicked around and misused. Think of it this way. Man is made in the image of God, and of the earth. When combined man became a living soul (Genesis 2). The teacher (Solomon) tells us (v.7 of the text) “…the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it”. At the resurrection the spirit and the body will again join to become an immortal soul. (1 Corinthians 15: 42-54) Jesus said, (v. 46) “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matthew 25: 31-46). We will not be dead all over like Rover. No, we are eternal, like God is eternal. The question in this life is, where do you want to live for eternity? Will your soul be all cleaned up by the blood of Jesus? Will you be making up excuses for you failure to obey the Gospel? Will you be up in heaven, or upset you missed out?
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