The word courage didn’t always mean bravery. At the time the King James translator’s were doing their work on the Bible, the word courage meant “feelings or passions of the heart.” Thus when the word is used in the scriptures we often find it preceded by the adjective good. God wants us to have “good courage” or “only good feelings and passions of the heart.”
This is especially interesting when we look at the word encouragement. The suffix –ment means “process of.” The prefix en- means to “put into.” So if we use the original definition encouragement is “the process of putting good feelings or passions of the heart into.”
As we surround ourselves with all that is good we can overcome much of the despair and disappointment that exist in the world. When we are confronted with the negative things of life we can counter the negative by clinging to the positive good things around us. Good music. Good friends. Good books. Good thoughts. These are just some of the things that can encourage and lift us.
I was thinking the other day about the feelings that one has when singing The Star-Spangled Banner. I was inspired to tell my children that that feeling of 'courage', 'bravery', can only come to those who are following Heavenly Father's will. In other words, only the righteous can have those feelings. Of course, I don't mean that others can't be patriots, but the feeling is just subtly but significantly different. Your comment on encouragement supports this thought-good feelings or feelings of passion being from God.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post, Sherrie. I really like that more correct definition of courage and encouragement. :)
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