Hey

  

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 1:2

I began this message with the greeting from Ephesians because that is where my Bible happened to be open. I could have chosen any of Paul’s letters, as they all contain some version of the same greeting. Grace and peace.

Recently I have become a big fan of Pastor Joseph Prince.  Pastor Prince is all about grace. He is also quite well educated in Hebrew letters, their meanings and significance. Many, many times I have heard him talk about Hei (pronounced, hey), that is, grace.

I am a Yankee transplant. As I write this I am eight months away from having lived in the South as long as I lived in the North. The theory is, however and I do believe it, once a Yankee, always a Yankee.

When I first moved here there were many Southern phrases that made me clench my jaw. To be fair, twenty-seven years later several still do. One, however, has grown on me. That is the use of the word, hey as a greeting.

Growing up I was reprimanded for using hey. “Hay is for horses.” My Gram and my mother would tell me. Or I would hear, in rather aggravated tones, “Hey, what?” While ‘hey there” was marginally friendly and acceptable, it was still mostly reserved for use by men. Nice girls did not say hey.

So there I was in the South, hearing over and over again, “Hey!” Okay….. At first it really bugged me but eventually I started to see it as friendly, colloquial, acceptable. I began to use it myself. Lo these many years later, I have embraced the “hey.”

Enter Pastor Prince who tells me that hei is grace in Hebrew. Really? So every time I say, “Hey” to someone I am wishing them grace? Fabulous!

Our world has become quite informal. I can’t for a second, imagine greeting even my nearest and dearest by saying, “Grace and peace be with you.” That is exactly what I want for them but saying it just seems a bit awkward.

I am thrilled to know that one of the words that irritated me upon my arrival to the sunny South has become a gift. I just wish Pastor Prince could help me get past, “all y’all” but I doubt that there is anything even the Hebrew language can do for that one.