Karen, a Jamaican Christian, had always studied the Bible in English. It was Jamaican Creole, however, that she grew up with at home. One day, a team from Wycliffe Caribbean, a Bible translation organisation, presented her with a New Testament translated into Creole. Reading it was a surprisingly moving experience for her. “It made me understand that God speaks my heart language,” she explained. “I felt at home and closer to God.”
Karen’s delight in reading the Bible in her native tongue calls to mind the astonishment experienced by the multinational Jewish crowd in Jerusalem at the first Pentecost. When the Spirit came to the disciples, tongues of fire above their heads indicated the gift of ‘tongues’, or ‘languages’, that the uneducated Galileans then began speaking miraculously (Acts 2:1–4). Impossibly, each person in the crowd, “from every nation under heaven” (v. 5) heard their language spoken: “we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” (v. 11 ). God wanted them to hear the good news of Christ in their ‘heart language’ so it was personal and precious to them.
Even as a native English speaker, spoiled for choice with translations, I often find it helpful to spend time studying a passage, then writing it out prayerfully, using vocabulary and phrasing that sounds truly like me. This method of meditating on God’s word is a way we can hear God speaking in our own ‘heart language’.
By Tanya Marlow
REFLECT & PRAY
What makes God’s Word come alive for you? Which nations of the world could you pray for to have Bible translations in their own language?
Thank You, Holy Spirit, that You bestow us with gifts and bring God’s Word to our hearts. Help me to hear Your message today.
SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
The celebration of Pentecost on the Christian calendar occurs seven weeks (or fifty days) after Easter. This special recognition commemorates the coming of the Holy Spirit (as promised by Jesus—Luke 24:49; Acts 1:5, 8), the subsequent birth of the church, and the ingathering of the first members of the family in Christ. But before Pentecost had significance for believers in Jesus, it was observed by God’s people in the Old Testament. The feast took place seven weeks after the Passover on the fiftieth day (see Leviticus 23:15–22 ). The event is also known as the Feast of Weeks or the Feast of Harvest. This great harvest festival was so special that work stopped and adult men traveled to the place of worship where loaves of bread baked from the new grain were offered to God (vv. 17–22). Following Christ’s death and resurrection, it was on this significant day that God sent the Holy Spirit.
Arthur Jackson
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