Prepositions are one of the parts of speech that people love to hate. I wish instead we would hate those who taught us to hate them and the things that taught us to hate them. Prepositions are the most loving part of speech, when we learn their universal meaning.
The major reason we learned to hate them is that they are defined differently by different teachers. Another reason we learned to hate them is that it was very difficult to identify them in a sentence, unless we memorized long lists of examples. The final reason we learned to hate them is that classmates, who saw these two problems, heaped a great deal of scorn on these innocent bystanders in speech. Why not learn to love them, rather than hate them?
Let me tell you the reasons we should love them. The first is that they have only one universal meaning, not the multiple meanings we were taught in school. They express in their universal meaning the idea of a part of a whole. Let me give you one example. The sentence, "Sally drove her car to the school," could be changed to "Sally walked to the school." The part of "Sally drove her car" was changed to the part of "Sally walked." The whole of "to the school" stayed the same. There is a variety of ways to get to school that are all parts of how a person could get to school. If time allowed, I could produce a host of examples here. Instead, I would recommend going to my link shown on the side of this blog, where I will treat this more extensively. Second, with this one universal meaning, there is more meaning behind the statistic that this is the most frequently used part of speech that there is in all languages combined. I know this has been studied by linguists and I don't know anyone who would contradict their status as number one. There is also a good chance that this same pattern of frequency would be found in the Bible. In linguistics (the study of language), the reason frequency matters is because it is linked to importance. It is like comparing an elephant to a mouse. The bigger one gets, the more one gets attention at the zoo. Third, with this level importance, it may be dangerous to hate them, because you normally want to deal with the most important things first, if you know anything about time management and the principle of focus.
That brings me to the link with holy means whole. Holy is the only word in the Bible that describes God's character that receives the repetition of "Holy, holy, holy." It does this in both Isaiah and in Revelation. This never happens with love, though the Beatles tried to give it that importance in one of their popular songs. Holy receives distinction in that it gets repeated together the most times of any word.
If holy means whole, then whole would receive this distinction of importance. And if prepositions are connected with dealing with parts and wholes, then they would support this special distinction of importance for wholeness. Language itself, even taking away the word holy to support it, suports wholeness as being of major importance in our lives.
Don't you think the God of the universe would clearly communicate this importance as well? Wouldn't He chose one word to point out the importance of impact of many words combined? Does His revelation in the Bible contradict the revelation of what He created in nature in the form of language? I doubt it. That is why I now love prepositions after I must confess I used to hate them. I owe them an apology, if they were living. May God bless you and your day.
In Christ,
Pastor Jon
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