Ballot
Stories
THE WONDER OF WORDS: BOOK 2
ONE-HUNDRED MORE WORDS AND PHRASES SHAPING HOW CHRISTIANS THINK AND LIVE
At election time, we enter the polling booth to choose a candidate, by using a pencil or pulling a lever to mark a ballot. The word ballot comes from the Italian word "ballotta," meaning little ball. In ancient Rome and Greece, voting was done by means of little balls which the voter deposited in a receptacle. If he favored the candidate, he cast a white ball; if he opposed the person, he dropped in a black ball. From that custom we get the verb "to blackball," meaning to exclude from membership in an organization.
People vote in ways other than using pencils, pulling levers, or dropping balls. The most common and sincere way you vote is with your feet! Our nation is a nation of immigrants who voted with their feet as they walked down gangplanks or stepped from airplanes onto the soil of America.
You vote with your feet when you go to church. People can talk a great deal about the importance of the church. They can discuss, for hours, how important it is to support positive, practical religion. People can say they want their children trained in an awareness of the religious dimension of life. Our real choices and our true values, however, show up not just in our talk, but in our walk. You vote for the church or the synagogue and for the spiritual interpretation of life when you walk into your house of worship each week. Your presence there is a ringing affirmation that you vote for America to be "one nation under God."
You vote with your feet whenever you choose to follow a particular course of action. Ponder the roads you've chosen to walk and the doors you've elected to enter, and you'll see what a difference those choices have made in your life. The man who collected proverbs, in the Bible, captured this truth about the human being, when he wrote these words: "He speaketh with his feet." (Proverbs 6:13)
People vote in ways other than using pencils, pulling levers, or dropping balls. The most common and sincere way you vote is with your feet! Our nation is a nation of immigrants who voted with their feet as they walked down gangplanks or stepped from airplanes onto the soil of America.
You vote with your feet when you go to church. People can talk a great deal about the importance of the church. They can discuss, for hours, how important it is to support positive, practical religion. People can say they want their children trained in an awareness of the religious dimension of life. Our real choices and our true values, however, show up not just in our talk, but in our walk. You vote for the church or the synagogue and for the spiritual interpretation of life when you walk into your house of worship each week. Your presence there is a ringing affirmation that you vote for America to be "one nation under God."
You vote with your feet whenever you choose to follow a particular course of action. Ponder the roads you've chosen to walk and the doors you've elected to enter, and you'll see what a difference those choices have made in your life. The man who collected proverbs, in the Bible, captured this truth about the human being, when he wrote these words: "He speaketh with his feet." (Proverbs 6:13)
