The Language of God

Most Christians who have grown up in Sunday School know that Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible.  All (except perhaps 1 or 2) of its 176 verses mention something about God's Word, declaring how great it is and how much the author depends on it and loves it.  Each section includes eight verses that begin with the same letter in the Hebrew alphabet.  In my readings, the fourth letter, Daleth, really stuck out to me.  In the NIV translation, verses 30-32 read as follows:

I have chosen the way of faithfulness;
I have set my heart on your laws.
I hold fast to your statutes, LORD;
do not let me be put to shame.
I run in the path of your commands,
for you have broadened my understanding.

I'm not the most dedicated readers of the Bible, but it is very important to me and as I am able to read it for myself on a regular basis, it shapes who I am into who God wants me to be.  It's strange to think that not very long ago, very few people had access to their own Bible and until the 1500s, nearly all Bibles were written in Latin, the language of the educated, but not of the common people.  According to the Wycliffe website, today there are approximately 6,800 languages in the world, over 2,000 of which still need a translation of the Bible.  These statistics certainly surprised me.  I just assumed that the Bible was already translated in pretty much every language.

Wycliffe Bible Translators pursue the task of going to those places that have no translation of the Bible, learning the language and working with the people to make a translation of the Bible into that language.  When I found out about it, I got excited.  Through high school Spanish, I discovered that I have a knack for learning languages and really enjoy learning about other cultures.  So, although I haven't heard a mysterious voice in the wind or received notes signed "-Abba", I feel I may have been called to translate the Bible for people-groups who have not yet been able to read about God's wonderful gift of grace in their own language.

Although God can bring about understanding of the Scriptures to those people who don't have a translation in their native language, when I think about the times I have seen the world in a new light or heard words that truly impacted my heart, they have always been in my native language.  I may know a few words in Spanish, German, French, Greek and Russian (some way more than others), but I neither think nor pray nor dream nor have epiphanies in any of these languages; I only have them in English, my native language.  Wycliffe was founded when one man who did not have access to a translation of the Bible in his native language asked why, if God is so powerful, he could not speak his language.

I cannot say that I have my future completely figured out now, but I have a direction to go now and I will see where that takes me.  Even if working as a Wycliffe Bible translator does not lie in my path, I still pray that the unreached peoples might:

Set their hearts on His laws...
and
...Run in the path of His commands,
Because He had broadened their understanding.