Word for the Week: Flabbergast

I am serving on a committee at my church whose mandate it is to create a worship statement.  And my particular assignement is to construct a statement about the purposes of worship.  So today I remembered this word from my book of words, Angling in the English Stream:

Flabbergast is a word whose origin no one speaks about with certainty, though one source suggests that it might be a combination of flabby and aghast.  That works for me since it brings to mind a picture of a person with flabby mouth wide open looking totally aghast at what has just happened.  Flabbergasted.  As I researched this word, I discovered a related word: Flabbergastation, “the state of being flabbergasted.”  It’s a wonderful word, but it ought to refer to a place where one can go, a sort of service station, that pumps you full of high octane amazement.

 Perhaps that’s one thing a church service should do—pump us full of amazement, the kind St. Paul feels when he exclaims in Romans 11:33:  “Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out!”  The church as flabbergastation!  Can’t you just see the looks of outrage, of absolute flabbergastation at the very thought?
 
Well, I have heard often enough that Sunday worship is not like a gas station where we are refueled with commitment and faith so that we can go out and live in the world for another week.  And I agree that worship must be much more than that.  But can't it sometimes serve that purpose also?  What a marvel it would be if we could came home from church as Mary Magdalene returned from the grave of the ressurected Savior, running and shouting, "I have seen the Lord."

           

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