A subtle difference

I've just spent a couple of days in Totnes with friends on a prayer ministry time. Overnight I stayed with a lovely friend who commented how words change their meanings. She mentioned the word 'prodigal' - how we come to think of it as meaning someone who has strayed from the Father or someone who has wasted his/her inheritance. In fact originally, she said, it held the meaning of being generous. I was a little surprised so looked it up in my dictionary when I got home. Sure enough, one of the meanings said 'lavish'. When you think about it, there seems to be a short way to go from being lavishly generous to being recklessly wasteful. It just reaffirms how Satan will take the good things and twist and abuse them until we cross over the invisible line and the good somehow becomes wrong. He is so clever at this subtle difference that we so often don't even notice it.

When this line is overstepped generosity becomes wastefulness; healthy goals become obsessions; leadership becomes abuse of power; freedom becomes licence etc. Let me know of any more you can think of.