Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: INDEFATIGABLE (02/11/16)
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TITLE: The Delicious Tyranny of Big Words | Previous Challenge Entry
By Dave Walker
02/16/16 -
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The fact that I was first mauled by one of these beasts from the prolix jungle made it all the more delectable when I had tamed them and could set them on others.
I was eleven years old when I was viciously attacked by a monster from the mouth of my favourite uncle. Glancing at me groaning under the pile of books I was hauling from the library, he said, “You’re a real bibliophile!”
I looked him up and down and my heart was pounding. Was he being offensive? I’d never owned a Bible in my life, nor a file. Should I hotly deny it? But he was smiling. Perhaps I should somehow take it as a compliment that he thought I owned a Bible. I answered his cheerful questions in morose monosyllables all the way home.
“Mom, what’s a bibliophile?”
That’s when she showed me the dictionary and I discovered the fascinating beasts prowling in the world of words.
The next time Jenny butted in on my conversation I said, “Are you trying to obfuscate?” and she went crying to her mother saying I had accused her of doing something obscene.
And when I told that beastly Jonathan he was being a bugaboo, he said he’d get his dad to wash my mouth out with soap for swearing at him.
On the subject of alcohol I told my friends my mother was abstemious and they were too scared to come round in case it was her moment for letting off steam.
And when, on a nature outing, I said I thought the clump of glutinous eggs we found floating in a pond looked batrachian, I reveled in the blank stares I got from everyone, including my teacher.
But my favourite word by far was indefatigable.
The postman was indefatigable as he hauled his bag from house to house. The cheetah on Animal Planet was indefatigable as he chased down his prey. My teacher was indefatigable the way she carried on till the last ring of the bell. I never got tired of using the beast (in fact I was indefatigable) and it never failed to intimidate friend or foe. Jane thought I was somehow calling my teacher a fat Indian. The postman glared at me, certain that I had insulted him, though not sure how. James, who also watched Animal Planet looked very knowledgeable, but I knew he wasn’t when he asked if that was why the cheetah had spots instead of stripes.
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A lot has changed since my quest as an eleven-year-old for power and uniqueness. I have discovered that my value is not in my ability to manipulate and dominate, but in what God thinks of me. He has shown me my value by what He was prepared to pay. The price was His tortured, bleeding body, with arms outstretched from a Roman cross to welcome me into the presence of His Father.
Yet indefatigable has remained my favourite word, along with indubitable, indispensible, inexorable and unutterable, for they all describe my beautiful Saviour. Apart from being truly untiring in His love and goodness towards us, His word is always trustworthy, never to be doubted, He is essential for true, abundant life, doggedly persistent in the way He pursues us and, though we can know Him personally, He is beyond description in His magnificence.
May He remain unequivocally resplendent in our eyes.
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Seriously, great job. Loved it.
I liked the connection with God's untiring love for us. The second to last paragraph seemed to lack "big words" but maybe that was intentional? Thanks for sharing!