{"id":5402,"date":"2026-04-30T08:53:40","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T12:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5402"},"modified":"2026-04-30T08:53:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T12:53:40","slug":"hanging-on-every-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/hanging-on-every-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Hanging on Every Word"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>
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Something has been bothering me for 37 years.
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This week, I finally did something about it.
\u00a0
In 1989, the McDonalds ventured to a local theater to see Honey, I Shrunk the Kids<\/em>, lighthearted family fare about a scientist\/inventor (played by Rick Moranis) whose quirky \u201cshrinking machine\u201d accidentally reduces his two children and a couple of neighbor kids to just a quarter inch in height.
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When the children fail to alert Moranis to their plight, he mindlessly throws them out with the trash. Now they must escape the trash bag and make their way back to the house across an overgrown yard that is teeming with natural and manmade obstacles.
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The outrageous plot points have never bothered me. That\u2019s part of the fun.
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But the title is a different story. \u00a0
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The movie should have been called Honey, I Shrank<\/u> the Kids<\/em>. The grammar is straightforward. The options for the verb are present, past, or past perfect tense: \u201cI shrink,\u201d \u201cI shrank,\u201d or \u201cI have<\/u><\/em> shrunk the kids.\u201d Rick Moranis is reporting a simple past event. Option 2, therefore, is the correct one.
\u00a0
If he had been talking about breakfast, he would surely have said, \u201cHoney, I drank<\/u><\/em> the orange juice,\u201d not, \u201cI drunk<\/u><\/em> the Minute Maid.\u201d
\u00a0
Something makes me think I should have let this go 37 years ago.
\u00a0
A few days ago, when I heard a national news reporter say, \u201cThe boat sunk\u201d (instead of \u201cThe boat sank\u201d) I decided it was high time to see what the Internet had to say. I found a couple of articles that acknowledged that while \u201cshrink, shrank, shrunk\u201d is technically the proper sequence of tenses, \u201cshrunk\u201d is occasionally<\/em> acceptable these days, in common parlance, as a substitute for \u201cshrank.\u201d
\u00a0
I believe I can finally watch the movie again in peace.
\u00a0
No one disputes that words and the meaning of words can be subject to change from generation to generation.
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Consider the dedication of St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral, the second largest church building in the world, which has dominated the London skyline for more than three centuries.\u00a0 \u00a0

When it opened in 1708, King George I let its architect, Christopher Wren, know exactly what he thought about it.
\u00a0
It was awful<\/em>, the king said. And artificial<\/em>.

If you\u2019re picturing Wren feeling devasted by those remarks, think again. He was thrilled. When the king said the new cathedral was “awful,” he meant “awe-full.”\u00a0It inspired a sense of awe.\u00a0And in the 18th century the English word “artificial” meant “full of great art.”\u00a0

Those were career-transforming compliments.\u00a0\u00a0

It’s one thing to hang on to the words of those who are evaluating our most recent projects.\u00a0It’s quite another thing to entrust our lives to the words of Someone whose communication is now 20 centuries old.

Has the meaning of God’s Word gradually gotten lost in translation?\u00a0\u00a0

It’s the job of professional scholars, theologians, and philologists to make sure we know, as best we can, what Jeremiah, Malachi, Luke, and Peter meant by the words they wrote so long ago.\u00a0

It’s God’s job, through his Holy Spirit, to make sure those same words grip our hearts on a daily basis.

The prophet Isaiah wrote what all of us can learn from personal experience:\u00a0“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

Seasons come and go.\u00a0Everything around us changes.

But the assurances we find in God’s Word – his bedrock promises of mercy, grace, and life-changing power – will never shrink, shrank, or shrunk.

You have to admit:

That’s a perfectly awful<\/em> thing to hear.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0Something has been bothering me for 37 years.\u00a0This week, I finally did something about it.\u00a0In 1989, the McDonalds ventured to a local theater to see Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, lighthearted family fare about a scientist\/inventor (played by Rick Moranis) whose quirky \u201cshrinking machine\u201d accidentally reduces his two children and a couple… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[854,1106,1026],"class_list":["post-5402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gods-word-2","tag-grammar","tag-word"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5404,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5402\/revisions\/5404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}