Sign up to receive Susan's latest post & your free Benefits for the Home School Parent E-book
S. A. J. Lyttek, a multiple award-winning writer, always loved writing, but didn’t arrive at the profession in the typical manner. After college and graduate school, she plunged into government consulting. In this environment, she discovered a knack for writing tests, interviews and other measurements. That soon became the focus of her career—reigniting her love for the written word. Thus captivated, she spent evenings freelancing “fun” writing including short stories, poems, articles and cards. When her eldest was a toddler, she quit full-time work to stay home and write. Eager to spend more time with her children, homeschooling intrigued her. From preschool through high school, she homeschooled both sons while continuing to freelance. While an integral part of the homeschooling community, she developed and taught writing classes to a generation of homeschoolers. Married to her childhood sweetheart, Gary, Mrs. Lyttek loves to share her commitment to learners of all ages and her fascination with the written word.
I’ve studied French since the 7th grade. Most of my life in other words. I know and understand a lot about the language. I’ve taught it to homeschoolers. I’ve read the Bible cover to cover in French twice. I could tell you why some verbs take être (to be) as a helper for the past tense versus the predominant avoir (to have). I could explain some of the nuances of the lovely word chez, which really doesn’t have an English equivalent. Or I can wax on the inadequacies of Le Petit Prince when translated out of the original French. But, other than the summer I lived in France, the language doesn’t live and breathe in me. I can read it, I can hear and understand it (especially if a guy is speaking or singing—women just are harder to hear the breaks between words), but to talk, I have to think too hard. It doesn’t come naturally because I don’t live with it day to day.
Why do I mention all of that? Because I think that’s an image of what it’s like for Christians to think or heaven or our life in Christ here and now. Because we were born in sin, goodness and godliness are foreign languages. We can study them all our lives after accepting Christ. We can know exactly how God wants us to live. We can hear and understand His voice and what His word says to us. But, because we don’t live in it day to day, because we aren’t in heaven yet, it doesn’t come naturally. We have to think too hard. And sometimes, because it’s not easy, because we have to work to speak the language, we fall short. We’re translating the life we know into the language of the life to come and often our native tongue has no way to express the concepts of what will be.
As Paul expresses it in 1 Corinthians 13, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.” We might know all the right words, truths, doctrine, but it can fail to translate into our everyday. We aren’t speaking the language of heaven if God’s love doesn’t flow through us and then out to the world. And when we try to speak God’s language without the actual language, it’s just noise.
I remember years ago when I used the Metro everyday to get to work, I’d often run into to tourists. Sometimes, those tourists spoke French. I would do my best not to eavesdrop, but I was so hungry to hear the language as it was intended to be instead of my feeble efforts, that I’d often listen in. On more than one occasion, the French held a degree of panic because the speakers couldn’t find their destination. How it thrilled me to use what I knew to point them in the right direction!
None of us on this earthly plane speak heaven’s language fluently. We’re trying. We’re learning. But we do a lot of stumbling trying to find the right word for what we want to say.
Even so, we can use what we have learned to help others. If people are looking for directions, but they don’t yet know how to communicate well, we can help them along and point them in the right directions. We need to use what we have, translate what we have.
If we do that, we echo, even if imperfectly, the heavenly choirs. And the Holy Spirit, makes up for what we don’t know and cannot say.
Because translating heaven’s words to those who are lost is always the will of our heavenly Father.
Not enough comments this week to award a prize. I humbly ask that if you like these blogs, you pass them on and share them with others.