I have an app on my phone that sends me a “Word of the Day” every morning around 8:00 am. For the most part, I’m already familiar with about half of the words, and the other half are completely new to me.
It’s thanks to this app that I now know that a fais-dodo is a country dance party and quaquaversal is an adjective which means “sloping downward from the center in all directions.” I haven’t been able to use these newfound vocabulary words in regular conversation yet, but it might happen. If I’m ever invited to a country dance party on the top of a steep hill, I’ll be ready with my small-talk icebreaker.
Several weeks ago my phone alerted me to the word sea change. I love words, especially ones that conjure up evocative images, so this one caught my attention. The definition read: “any major transformation or alteration; a transformation brought about by the sea.”
With the devastating hurricanes and flooding we’ve seen recently, there’s no further explanation required when describing the change which can be wrought by the sea. It can be complete and overwhelming.
Along with words, I also love a good story, and nothing much beats a story of major transformation. There’s fictional ones like Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol or the selfish prince in Beauty and the Beast. These characters go from jerks who seem to have no redeemable qualities to kind and unselfish men. But you can’t skip what happens in between—the sea that brings the sea change.
The Apostle Paul is the ultimate example of transformation in the Bible. When my husband read the story of Paul’s conversion to our 6-year old last night, our son asked, “God made him blind?” We had to answer yes—God took Paul’s sight as he walked along the road, on his way to persecute more Christians. If not for the blinding light and appearance of the risen Jesus, would Paul have made a complete 180 to defend and spread the word of Christ instead of looking for ways to stifle it?
I want to believe that anyone is capable of experiencing a major transformation. I want to use my Holy Spirit Goggles to see people for what they could be and not just what they seem to be.
And I want to personally and daily experience the transformation Paul wrote about in the Book of Romans when he urged his readers to “let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.”
It’s easy to ask God to make sea changes in me while I’m standing on dry ground but more remarkable to ask for it while I’m up to my knees in rising seawater. I want to have the faith to ask Him to change me despite of what it might cost.
