Moreover
I remember the years of learning how to write essays, how to keep then interesting and not repetitive. Conjunctive adverbs were my biggest hurdle. Most sentences began with also, or however. An expansion of vocabulary was required. My dad saw this as a personal challenge and made me sit down with the thesaurus until I had a collection I could use. We now had in addition, nonetheless, likewise, and subsequently to add to the list.
Yet, my favourite was the word moreover. I have no idea why, but it became the most used conjunctive adverb in my written vocabulary and it stayed the most used the whole way through university and Bible college.
Therefore
Over the past seven weeks, we have been working through the book of Philippians reading Paul’s instructions and encouragement to the church in Philippi. Every time I read Paul I notice that he too loves a conjunctive adverb. 77 times in Paul’s writings (in NIV translation), we find the word ‘therefore’, and it is found six times alone in the letter to the Philippians.
A few weeks ago with QPYouth, one of the team reminded our young people that if the word ‘therefore’ is used, we need to ask what it is there for. So, I will leave you with a couple of questions to ponder before we gather on Sunday for QPLive, but the first of these is not so much a question as an encouragement…
1. Why not re-read Philippians 1:1-3:21 to better understand what the therefore is there for.
2. What have you learnt/been reminded of that you need to put into practice from the first three chapters of Philippians?
Caz