As you can see, He ended the prayer with, "Amen".
You may recall from my last post (here) that as a child I thought of prayers as if they were letters to a long lost, posh relative, or stories which needed to be told in the correct and proper way. With this in mind, I assumed that the word, "Amen" meant "The End".
Feel free to laugh at me here but I remember so many prayers as a youngster, in fact almost every time, where I would go through the motions of my prayer and say "Amen" and then remember something else to add. I'd say to God, "Sorry, sorry, not Amen, I forgot something!"
Sometimes I'd even finish with the Lord's Prayer but end up confused and worried because I felt that I had to say the "Amen" at the end but also conclude with "in Jesus' name, Amen", like I'd heard people at church do - so I'd say it twice!
So what does "Amen" actually mean?
It seems, through looking at the different versions of the Bible, that the word "Amen" has been translated into phrases such as: "so let it be"; "so be it"; "I agree"; and "may the Lord do so".
According to my research (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) the first instance of the word "Amen" in the Bible was in Numbers 5 and the last occurance is in Revelation, appearing a total of 78 times throughout the whole Bible.
In Numbers 5:22, the word seems to mean "so be it", referring to a curse befalling the woman accused of committing adultery. The priest would make her drink some water mixed with dust from the floor of the tabernacle. If she were guilty, the Lord would make her thigh fall away and her body swell (Numbers 5:21). In order to acknowledge the severity of this accusation and accept the judgement, the woman was required to say, "Amen, Amen" or, in some other translations, "So be it, so be it".
Remember, the penalty for adultery back then wasn't a quickie divorce, a raised eyebrow and a few less friends. It was death. If a woman was found guilty of committing adultery, she would be put to death. If you don't believe me, read Leviticus and Deuteronomy, women were either stoned to death or burnt with fire.
For a moment, put yourself in her shoes - saying "Amen" just before drinking that potential cup of death isn't just a nice ending to a prayer. It isn't just a fluffy word that we all use everyday without thinking twice about it. It was a solemn and potentially condemning word which was almost certainly not said lightly. She may as well have invited God to strike her down there and then if she were found to be lying.
Sometimes I think that we are guilty of forgetting the importance of the word and the implications of it. It's understandable, what with the constant requests for, "can I get an Amen?" and people using the word as a synonym for, "yeah I agree with that".
As an example, check out this meme (a comedy picture circulating around social media)Now, I'm all for the message - I don't want to see underwear either, but is it really something that requires an "Amen"?
I doubt it!
I'm struggling to get to the point of what I'm trying to say here. I guess what I wanted to share is that, it doesn't matter if we say "Amen" at the end of our prayer, or if we say it three or four times during our prayer. It doesn't matter if we say it in our daily lives, it's not an end point. It's an affirmation; an acceptance; an expectation.
I've thoroughly enjoyed researching this - so much so that this post has taken me close to three hours - there's so much more I wish I could have gone into but I wouldn't want to go on and on and bore you all to tears! Just because I discover an interest in everything and love researching, it doesn't mean you guys want to read an encyclopedia, does it?
So I'll leave it there, for now. I hope this topic has given you food for thought as much as it has me. Maybe next time we revisit this - as I'm sure we will - I'll delve into the use of "Amen" as a congregation or gathering of people, or into the New Testament use of the word... there's so much!
I pray that you are blessed abundantly - and I think we can all agree on an "Amen" there!
- Lisa
