What do you notice here?<\/p>\n
I you he she we they<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Anything? How about<\/p>\n you he she I we they<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n It’s something that struck me the other day – the self-importance of it all. “I” is the only one we give a capital letter. I am so much more important than you, and you are less important than I. I don’t mean that, of course, but it is very symptomatic of how we look at ourselves and how we look at others. It certainly doesn’t help when we have this innate bias from just the way we spell! I know that it’s only in the English language, but I think that the fact that the English language is taking over as the international language of choice maybe says a lot, eh?<\/p>\n The Greek letter i is the smallest letter in the Ancient Greek alphabet. It is so small that the ancient Greeks didn’t even put a dot on it. It is the letter iota<\/em><\/strong>, and it gives us the English word jot – as in ‘jotting something down’ – making a quick note. Sometimes we use the word iota, as in ‘it doesn’t make one iota of difference’.<\/p>\n Then came the Romans. The word they used for the pronoun I is ego<\/strong><\/em>. Do you recognise that? It’s a word which has been adopted straight into English, and comes with the connotations of self-importance, conceit, self-esteem.<\/p>\n I.<\/p>\n I think I think too much in terms of I.<\/p>\n I think i should start thinking more in terms of Others.<\/p>\n But it’s more than that. When I became a Christian I accepted Christ as my Lord and Saviour. But did I really do both, or did I just accept Him as my Saviour? Did I really accept Him as my Lord? Do I put Him, the great I AM, higher than I put the I that I am?<\/p>\n He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less. (John 3:30, NLT)<\/p>\n It’s worrying me quite a bit. I must become less – and less, and it’s not easy. A lifetime of I is hard to change to a life of i.<\/p>\n I have to dot my i.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What do you notice here?<\/p>\n I you he she we they<\/p>\n Anything? How about<\/p>\n you he she I we they<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[3,17,413,374,38,48,55,373],"class_list":["post-2239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","tag-bibleblogs","tag-christ","tag-christian","tag-ego","tag-god","tag-jesus","tag-lord","tag-selfishness","category-5","description-off"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfWaLo-A7","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2110,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2011\/01\/right-mountain-out-of-the-way\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":0},"title":"Right, Mountain, out of the way!","author":"Robert Pender","date":"27\/01\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"A friend of mine will shortly set out on an amazing adventure - to climb Mount Kilimanjaro - to help raise funds for the charity Scottish Spina Bifida. I really admire him for that. It will take courage, strength and endurance. You can sponsor him if you would like to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christianity"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/christian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2194,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2011\/04\/well-well-will-will\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":1},"title":"Well, well! Will, will!","author":"Robert Pender","date":"05\/04\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"How big is your faith? In our Celebrate Recovery programme, we have been talking quite a bit about faith and, to help people get a grasp of what Jesus said about faith (Matthew 17:20), we gave everyone a mustard seed. If we have faith that big, we can move a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christianity"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/christian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3915,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2018\/02\/compared-to-others-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":2},"title":"Compared to Others (2)","author":"Robert Pender","date":"22\/02\/2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Hands up anyone who is imperfect \u2026\u2026. Of course, anyone who didn\u2019t put a hand up is full of pride and has therefore fallen from a state of perfection, so you can put your hand up too! Now that we all have our hands up, I thought we would just\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christianity"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/christian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4337,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2019\/04\/all-in-the-head\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":3},"title":"All in the Head","author":"Robert Pender","date":"25\/04\/2019","format":false,"excerpt":"[vc_row][vc_column width=\"1\/2\"][vc_single_image image=\"4338\" img_size=\"full\"][\/vc_column][vc_column width=\"1\/2\"][vc_column_text]Anyone who knows me knows that I've got a head. I think it's to do with the lack of hair. My head is very visible because of that. There is no hair to hide it. The thing is, though, that it's not what's on the head\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christianity"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/christian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1865,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2010\/11\/can-i-help-mr-cameron\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":4},"title":"Can I help, Mr Cameron?","author":"Robert Pender","date":"28\/11\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I was interested to read that Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, is going to spend \u00c2\u00a32million on measuring the happiness of the British people. Happiness, according to the dictionary is a state of well being and contentment. I do not see a lot of contentment in the society in which we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christianity"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/christian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4531,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2019\/05\/a-shadow-of-my-future-self\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":5},"title":"A shadow of my future self","author":"Robert Pender","date":"01\/05\/2019","format":false,"excerpt":"[vc_row][vc_column width=\"1\/2\"][vc_single_image image=\"4532\" img_size=\"full\"][\/vc_column][vc_column width=\"1\/2\"][vc_column_text css=\"\"]Many years ago I had a very sore back. It would come and go every few months. First one side would hurt and, just as it was getting better, then the other side would start to hurt. I have a very vivid memory of John\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christianity"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/category\/christian\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}