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_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_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfWaLo-A7","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3915,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2018\/02\/compared-to-others-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":0},"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":2110,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2011\/01\/right-mountain-out-of-the-way\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":1},"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":2},"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":4636,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2019\/09\/lies-lies-lies\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":3},"title":"Lies, lies, lies!","author":"Robert Pender","date":"16\/09\/2019","format":false,"excerpt":"[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=\"4638\" img_size=\"full\" alignment=\"center\"][vc_column_text]Have you ever told a lie? Have you ever been told a lie? Have you ever known that you were being lied to? I\u2019m sure your answer to all these questions is a loud \u201cYes!\u201d There are a lot of lies around, but have you ever thought\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":3919,"url":"https:\/\/pender.org.uk\/index.php\/2018\/05\/praying-at-the-right-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":5},"title":"Praying at the right time","author":"Robert Pender","date":"08\/05\/2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I once went for an interview in London and I was having a lot of trouble finding a parking space. I finally found one in a multi-storey car park and then ran to the place where the interview was being held. I arrived just in time, but after the interview\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,"_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}]}}