More Valuable Than an Enamel Plate
I will never forget that young mother’s prayer during evening Bible class!
My wife and I were in the last stages of the Bible translation program, where for twenty years, we had been called Tehtikwyj and Prejaka by the thousand-plus Canela villagers living in the wilds of Brazil. Two dozen Canela men and women surrounded me, sitting on logs. We had sung hymns set to Canela indigenous music patterns, and in a few minutes, would read and talk about a new translated draft of a chapter of the Bible.
Prayer Time
Now, it was time to pray. First, I heard prayers asking God to heal sick children, for a good crop, and for help to find a lost bush knife. Then a young mother prayed:
“Great Father in the Sky,” she began. “I want to thank You for sending our brother Prejaka, and our sister Tehtikwyj, to our village long ago when I was just a baby. They are our teachers. First, they taught us to read our own language. Then, they worked with us to turn Your Words into our language. Now we can read Your Letter to us. Now we are discovering that You love us very much. Now we are learning how we can live to please you. Please help them to finish Your Book soon.”
Prayer for Donors
Then came the unforgettable part that brought tears to my eyes.
“I also want to thank You for all Prejaka and Tehtikwyj’s friends far away in their own country. They know that our brother and sister don’t have a food garden here as we do. So, for all these years, every month, their friends have sent them money so they can buy food. They keep on sending them their money, not just because they are Prejaka and Tehtikwyj’s friends, but because they are their brothers and sisters. Yes, they are all part of Your family, Great Father, and they are our brothers and sisters too.
“Maybe one of them is a mother and she is in a market, and she has money in her basket. And then she sees a new enamel plate, and she wonders, Should I buy this for my family so we can each have our own plate?
But then, she decides not to buy anything, and instead, she sends the money to our brother and sister so they can live here and make the books of Your Word.
“And she sure chose right because Your Word is so much more valuable than an enamel plate, even if it comes with a shiny new spoon.
As a reward, give these faraway brothers and sisters lots of healthy children; make their gardens grow well, and keep them from getting sick. Amen.”
What’s Happening Today
This young mother’s children have for the past thirty years grown up with a Bible in their language and are teaching their own children. Meanwhile, Bible translation programs are going on in thousands of languages around the world right now. Translation teams have completed hundreds of programs in the last ten years. It is very likely that while you are reading this column:
Somewhere in the world, someone is reading or hearing the Word of God in their own language for the first time.
Somewhere, someone whom you will not meet until eternity could be asking God to bless you, the donors to Bible translation and cross-cultural missions, because, as that young Canela mother said, “You sure chose right!”