Driving Force

When someone greets me, and says... "Hey, howzitgoin'??", I often answer, "Good!" , usually meaning something like, "Oh, it's Ok, you know.... could be better, could be worse". It kind of becomes a patterned response.

I like to drive. And when I drive on highways, where I have opportunity to put my mind on cruise control, my car becomes many things... a think tank, a prayer closet, or where I blog in my head. As I was driving this morning, I was thinking about the word, good. And I realized I really don't have a clue how good good really is. My notion of good has become somewhat generic.

And then, I remembered that good is a word from God's vocabulary.

When God created everything there is, He said it was good. In Hebrew, the word used is towb,and means pleasant, valuable in estimation, and happy. It also stands for excellent, better, and best. While we seemingly have the need to qualify 'good' by degrees -- good, better, best -- God's word for 'good' included them all. Jesus said, "No one is good -- but God alone." That makes being good a pretty high calling, and wishing someone good, a great blessing. In fact, the original Old English word for 'good' was 'god' (lower case g).

So, I am more thoughtful now of what I call good. Telling someone to 'have a good day' takes on greater implications. The term good-looking is even a greater complement; a good-natured person is someone I really want to hang around; good-to-go is a confidence builder.

But, I got tripped up on this one... good-bye. I don't like good-byes. They mostly make me cry and usually don't leave me feeling very, ... good. Except that I've learned the word's origin comes from the Old English phrase, "God be with ye", which eventually became... good-bye. It helps a little.