Seeds For Thinking

Link: http://seedsforthinking.oldgleaner.com/

* Holy Language
* Scripture: Jesus said: "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations . . ."
Matthew 28:19a, NKJV

I have retained at least a few snippets from my two-year study of high school Latin, including one short, non-Latin, poem:

"Latin is a dead, dead language,
As dead as dead can be.
It killed off all the Romans,
And now it's killing me. "

Some kindred soul, the previous guardian of the textbook, had expressed the sentiments of many a youth struggling through the conjugations and declentions of what was, without question, a foreign language to most of us.
Granted, many of our English words derive from Latin roots, as do many words of other national languages, the so-called "Romance" languages. Granted, also, that the scriptures of Holy Writ were preserved for centuries in Latin, and, even into the mid 20th Century, remained the language of the mass in the Roman Catholic Church. The fact remains that the scriptures were not originally written in Latin, but in Hebrew and Greek, for the most part, all 'foreign' to most of us.
Jesus and the people of Galilee commonly spoke Aramaic, a Semitic language used extensively in southwest Asia as a commercial and governmental language and adopted by the Jews after the Babylonian exile.
Jesus' cry from the cross, in Matthew 27:46, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani," is Aramaic. The title Pilate placed on the cross was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, the languages of the temple and synagogue, of commerce, and of the Roman Empire.
"Living" languages change over time. Words come and go, often shifting in meaning. Greek is still written using the alphabet used by the New Testament authors, but the pronunciation is different in modern Greek. Many languages, including English, use the letter forms developed by the Romans, but Latin itself is distinctively 'foreign' to most of the people of the nations of the world.
I think we can rightly say that the 'messenger' or 'carrier' has changed over the centuries, at least as far as the spoken or written word is concerned. And that is as it should be.
Suppose that religious authorities declared that the "Word of God" was so Revered, Holy, and Untouchable, that only the original words and languages could be used to expound the scriptures.
Think about the many, many would-be Christians struggling like first-year Latin scholars, just to experience God's Word!
Think about trying to make disciples of all the nations without being able to use their native language.
Praise Be! God transcends time, borders, nationalities, and languages.
October 22, 2006

Link: http://seedsforthinking.oldgleaner.com/

* Change
* Scripture: Jesus said, "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." (John 3:17, NKJV)

Did you set your clock back as the calendar rolled over from 2005 to 2006? No, they haven’t been playing with Daylight Savings Time - this time, anyway. The keepers of the official universal clock added a leap-second at the end of 2005.
That’s right - your year just became longer by one second, according to the folks who keep track of such matters. The truth is, the solid old earth under our feet gets a bit wobbly sometimes, and the speed of rotation shifts a little. Over time, that tiny bit of change adds up, throwing off the precise calculation of celestial affairs.
You wouldn’t want the clock to gradually creep ahead until it didn't become daylight until nearly noon, would you? Granted that it will take a while for that to happen, but even a few seconds is too much for rocket scientists and astronomers, people who talk billions of miles and millionth parts of seconds.
While the clock may be brought into alignment with the universe and bring order out of chaos, so to speak, not everyone is thrilled with such precision. Many people still haven’t figured out how to get the clock on their VCR to quit flashing "12:00" let alone synchronize every clock and watch for which they are responsible. That’s why inventors are building devices, such as cell phones and GPS systems, that automatically set themselves to the universal standard clock.
But what about those gadgets that are not set up to be automatic? Think about the brouhaha about Y2K - you know, the end of time as we know it, because all those ancient devices built for the 20th Century couldn’t cope with - Gasp! - a millennial leap.
Messing around with things like clocks and calendars can create a lot of problems. Even little things, as small as a second, cause some people to get their ire up, mostly, as it turns out, over needless worries.
So imagine what happens when one generation tries to change something that previous generations consider to be sacrosanct. Absolute; untouchable! Like the order of the church’s worship service. Or new people in the church leadership group.
Yes. I’m talking about the birth of Jesus. A millennial change of the first order. Not everyone liked the changes His coming brought about; many still refute both the event, and the rationale for such a drastic modification of the way people relate to God.
As with the leap second, the problem was not a celestial one. The Heavenly standard is quite precise, thank you. It’s an earthly problem. Some adjustments needed to be made. Somebody had to do it.
So God sent His Son into the world that the world through Him might be saved.
January 1, 2006