"Everywhere and always as Christians follow Jesus we use words that were first used by God in bringing us and the world around us into being. Our language is derivative (as everything about us is!) from the language of God. Our common speech is in continuity with the language of God. Words are essential and words are holy wherever and whenever we use them. Words are inherently holy regardless of their employment, whether we are making a shopping list, making conversation with an acquaintance on a street corner, praying in the name of Jesus, asking for directions to the bus station, reading the prophet Isaiah, or writing a letter to our MP. We do well to reverence them, to be careful in our use of them, to be alarmed at their desecration, to take responsibility for using them accurately and prayerfully. Christian followers of Jesus have an urgent mandate to care for language - spoken, heard or written - as a means by which God reveals himself to us, by which we express the truth and allegiance of our lives, and by which we give witness to the word made flesh."
- Eugene H. Peterson, The Jesus Way. p66-67. Hodder and Stoughton, London (2007).
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