A Celebration of Prepositions

"through Him... with Him... in Him..."

Romans 8:37... 1 Corinthians 6:17... 1 John 4:13

I love the English language, and grammar, but having taught it to my kids for several years (a process which is ongoing) I certainly know that it's not easy to understand.  Take, for instance, prepositions.  They are kind of hard to define.  When I was in sixth grade, my teacher taught us that a preposition is "anywhere a squirrel can go".  It's a colorful illustration, but not quite accurate.  It applies to "up a tree" and "past the pile of nuts" and "in the hole" but it doesn't seem to work with prepositions like "about," as in: "I read a book about squirrels."  Or "during," as in:  "The squirrel opened her eyes during prayer because she thought someone was sneaking away with her nuts."

Well, you get the point.   I've also seen a definition for prepositions that was "a word that links together words in a sentence."  I thought that was just incredibly vague.  By that definition, the word "and" is a preposition! So basically I've told my kids that they're basically just gonna have to memorize prepositions for the most part, so they'll know them when they see them.  And I sang them a catchy little ditty that my mom taught me, that contains a lot, but not all, of them.

Well this year, I'm using a new curriculum to teach my Amazing Boy, and they had a definition I'd never seen before.  This said a preposition shows the relationship between a noun/pronoun, and another word in the sentence.   I thought that was interesting.  It seemed to include more prepositions in its definition than the squirrel illustration.  But what really intrigued me was the word "relationship".    A relationship is defined as "the way two people or things connect".  And that, of course, made me think of God.  All of a sudden I realized the many prepositions that are used to describe our relationship with Jesus... our connection with Him.

So here are a few examples ~ hopefully these describe you!  :)

"If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him."
(1 John 2:29)

"The multitude pressed about Him."
(Luke 5:1)

"He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him."
(1 Corinthians 6:17)

"By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit."
(1 John 4:13)

"Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us."
(Romans 8:37)

"It will be said in that day: 'Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us.  This is the Lord; we have waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation."
(Isaiah 25:9)

"Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because He has come to His people and redeemed them... to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.  And you, my child... will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for Him."
(Luke 1:68,74,76)

See?  You had no idea grammar was so inspirational, did you?  :)