VOCIFERATE
Today's reading: Luke 19-20

"He replied, If they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!" Luke 19:40 NLT

I've found a new word.

Vociferate.

It's a 'five-dollar word', according to friends who judge words on their sound, their quantity of letters and how very, very seldom you might use them.

It's a word that makes you sound smart when you insert it in to conversation.

It's a word that sounds high and mighty, but when I looked up its meaning in the dictionary, it means to utter loudly, shout, bawl, bay, bellow, cry, holler, roar, thunder or yell.

I understand the meaning when one puts it into those terms.

Had the crowds that Palm Sunday kept quiet with their praises, Jesus tells us the rocks themselves would have hollered out about just how wonderful He is.

They wouldn't have just chanted like monks in a monastery or did a nice solemn responsive reading as some churches do. They wouldn't have organized their voices as a symphony or responded in four-part harmony.

They would have given it all they had. Like a newborn calf who bawls for its mother. Or as an old coon hound that bays below the tree he has a raccoon tree-d in. Or as a very sports-minded grandpa bellows at a ballgame as he watches his offspring dribble down a court inching in on a basket. Or as the clouds bump together in a summer storm causing the rumbling thunder that shakes the very earth. Or as a hurt child cries out for their mother.

Why?

Because He deserved/deserves praise! Then and now.

Let's praise Him loudly and clearly, friends.