One day it hit me that the letter series GES often occurs in English words. I started making a list. Then I asked my phone and found out that there’s a scrabble dictionary that lists words that end with, start with, or contain certain combinations of letters.
There are about 200 nine-letter words that end in GES! They include blockages, carriages, converges, dislodges, envisages, heritages, marriages, midranges, recharges, scrounges, shortages, and wreckages.
There are about 100 ten-letter words, including advantages, appendages, cartridges, disparages, encourages, frontpages, knowledges, orphanages, partridges, scrimmages, skybridges, and zylophages.
Nearly forty eleven-letter words end in GES, including subterfuges, remarriages, overdosages, footbridges, drawbridges, and centrifuges.
Should I go on with the hundreds of shorter words ending in GES?
This doesn’t count all the words that start with GES. They include words like gestalt, gestation, gesticulate, gesture, and gestate. There are about seventy-five such words.
Then, GES occurs in the middle of scores of words. These include suggest, suggestion, autosuggestion, suggestibility, ingest, digest, progesterone, predigest, decongest, indigestion, and congestive.
How about names that end with GES? Hodges,i Burges, Narges, Magges, Georges, and Wawinges, to name a few, all end with GES. There are also plenty of first and last names that start with GES.
The next time you see a word with GES, I hope you think of Free Grace theology, the promise of life, and the prospect of eternal rewards.
In one sense, GES is a small ministry. We have only three full-time staff (Ken, Kathryn, and me), three part-time staff (Bethany, Colin, and Samii), and a handful of people who do contract work for us.iii But we have a worldwide impact. Ken and Kathryn travel all over the world speaking. So do scores of people who are involved in our ministry but are not on staff. Our new online seminary has students from many countries and continents. Our podcasts, YouTube videos, blogs, and articles reach people all over the planet. So do our books and booklets.
Of course, we are a tiny minority within Christendom. Most people believe in works salvation, Lordship Salvation, or universalism. However, we in the Focused Free Grace movement are reaching lots of people. We rejoice in each testimony we hear of someone who gained assurance of everlasting life after years and decades of floundering in a church that was proclaiming a false gospel.
Thank you for your prayers, encouragement, and financial support. Together, we are making a difference.
Keep grace in focus.
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i I don’t know if Zane Hodges ever thought about the fact that his name ends with GES. I never discussed it with him. I don’t even think I realized that his name contained GES until years after he passed in 2008. I find it ironic that as a person who was instrumental to the birth and growth of GES, his name coincidentally ends with those letters.
ii Sam Marr will be joining us in late October to handle the help desk (phones, email, order fulfillment) and administrative assistance.
iii We also have about twenty-five authors and editors working on our OT commentary and nearly ten faculty for our online seminary. There are about twenty people who speak at our annual conference each year. And there are another twenty or so people who write for our magazine, Grace in Focus.
