Amen!
By: Cooper Nelson
“Amen” is a word I’ve been saying pretty absentmindedly for most of my life, but admittedly I’ve never thought much about what it meant until I started writing this. The word originated in Hebrew, originally pronounced as “āmēn” (sounds like “ah-men” or “a-mayn”), and is symbolic of truth and certainty.
It’s pretty tough to try to write about just one word. Of course I have a relationship with the word. It entered my vocabulary just after “Mama” and “Dada”. I’ve been speaking the Lord’s Prayer since I could form words mostly because I hate being the only one not saying the same thing everyone else is. I don’t remember anyone telling me what it means, but the part I thought about the least was “Amen”. “It’s just one word. How important can it be?” is something I probably didn’t even ask myself because I deemed Amen to be so unimportant. As I’ve said it over the years and as I got better at thinking critically, I started to realize that Amen might be the most important word of all. We end every single prayer we say with Amen and it’s used as a general “I agree” in our common day. Every time we say Amen, it’s a resounding “Yes”.
I’ve been spending my time trying to figure out a deeper meaning to the word Amen. It’s been pestering me for years because there is no way a word can just be that one thing. Every definition of Amen has been the same and it’s been used in the same way since the start, but is that so wrong? Is it so bad that Amen could be the most simple word to use? Like I’ve said a few times, I’ve been saying Amen since I could form words. If any of you have children, they’ve probably said Amen before. It’s the word that connects every single person in the world. Babies, the elderly, you, your neighbors, your church officials; All of them say Amen because it connects us so closely to God. We pray to him and before he can even answer, we already know what he’ll say: “It shall be so”.
