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The Fewer the Better?

I’m generally a K.I.S.S. principle kind of guy, that is, Keep It Simple S.…d.  And sometimes it seems that the use of many words can violate that principle quite quickly.  After all, why use a whole bunch of words when fewer words can keep it simple?

Consider each of these individual words:

Glad:  experiencing pleasure, joy, or delight; feeling pleased and happy. 

Rejoice:  to give joy to; gladden; to feel or show great happiness.

Happy:  feeling, showing, or causing pleasure or satisfaction; causing joy or gladness

Joyful:  feeling, expressing, or causing great pleasure and happiness.

If you want to be simple and concise, you could probably just use any one of those descriptive words in a sentence.  In many ways, they are mostly interchangeable so just use one or two at the most.

But using all four in one sentence; too verbose?  Overkill?  A violation of the K.I.S.S. principle?

Look at what the Psalmist wrote:  “But may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful.” (Psalm 68:3)

Yep, all four in one sentence!  There goes the K.I.S.S. principle.  Well, maybe not!  Perhaps the Psalmist used all four in one sentence in a deliberate way to get us to grasp and appreciate all that we can experience in our relationship with God.

Yes, simple and concise have their place but maybe not when we it comes to our relationship with God.  Not that we resort to using more words than necessary but maybe it is OK to use more words since words can sometimes be very inadequate to capture what really needs to be said.

So if you are trying to describe how we should feel before God, maybe glad alone is so very insufficient and we need to include being happy, joyful and rejoicing!

  

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