Speaking Her Language

Yesterday in church I sat in church between two children, Frank on my right and a little girl on my left. This little girl only spoke Spanish a year ago when I met her, but so much has changed in her life, including the way she communicates with most of those around her.

She sat politely in her chair. She looked at the slides and laughed with everyone else, but maybe just not as hard. I remembered when school started that she’d wanted to get into the bilingual program where they speak English half the day and Spanish for the other half. It isn’t that she isn’t great at speaking one or the other. It was just that she felt she’d be more comfortable.

Pastor Adrian continued in the sermon, reading from Matthew 5, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” I watched her watching him and looking up at the screen behind him. I remembered what it has been like for me when I have sat in 3rd service, our Hispanic service. By the end of it, I am exhausted from the mental energy it takes for me to keep up.

In front of me, Pastor Adrian was talking about what the original Greek said, how it was important to remember that the Bible wasn’t written in English, how in other languages they have multiple different words for “love” but in English be just say “love.”

I wondered…..

I have a Bible app on my phone that lets me use the Bible in seemingly endless translations and languages. I scrolled through some options and changed Mathew 5 to Mateo 5.

Ustedes han oído que se dijo: “Ama a tu prójimo y odia a tu enemigo”. Pero yo les digo: Amen a sus enemigos y oren por quienes los persiguen, para que sean hijos de su Padre que está en el cielo.

Her eyes scan across those words, the same words which were on the screen, but in her own language. I watched her mouth open and her eyes get big. She turned her face up and her eyes met mine. “Oh wow!” she said, before turning back to the little glowing screen where she read to the end of the chapter.

“Oh, wow.” Something clicked in those two little words, said with such sincerity.

For her, you could see her worldview shifting. Amen a sus enemigos? Oren por quienes los persiguen? Oh, wow. For me, another verse rolled through my mind.

“Yo soy el que soy.”

Yo soy. The first time I read that it moved something inside of me. I love to hear God called “I am.” It has meant so much to me to learn what that means over the past few years. I spend a fair bit of time saying one of my favorite phrases to myself, “I am not I AM.” But Yo Soy? It sounded so different, new and yet still, somehow, known.

Sitting there yesterday, watching her eyes get bigger and bigger as she read on, I thought, it is so incredible that we have the ability to translate this text. But even more incredible is that we have The Spirit who clarifies those words.

She and I may each feel more comfortable speaking two different languages, but the same message is clear to each of us. Love is different than we think. It asks more of us, asks us to choose to stay with loving even those who hate us, not the way we love our spouse or children, but in its own way. This love is the fierce determination that hate will not drive out fear and that if we claim to be the children of God, we must be marked by this kind of dangerous, unreasonable, irrational, unconquerable love.

I have marveled watching this little girl over the past year, watching her navigate new physical, social, and cultural territory. It has been difficult at times for me to connect with her when her world is so incredibly different from my own.

But here is what I know. Yo Soy knows her just as He knows me. He knows her name just like He knows mine. It is a great tool to have a translator on my phone, but I am so much more appreciative that we have this Great Translator available to us.

I encourage you, if you have the opportunity to learn another language, do it. There are so many apps out there that make it possible. But also this. I have found that the greatest tool I have when I am trying to communicate with others in Spanish is prayer which asks the Translator to fill in the gaps, to give me the right words, and to help me hear.

For today my prayer is this….will you pray this with me?

Father, that I might love, that I might learn, that I might persist and choose to love my enemies, that I might speak and that I might hold my tongue, that I might listen and that might really hear, I ask for you to clarify my words, the words of those around me, but most importantly, Your Word. Give me the conversations that You want me to have today. Amen.

Our Struggle To Connect

There is this young guy that works at the Starbucks near the church. He has just brown hair and just brown eyes. Not poetic brown. Not chocolate syrup hair and deep dark golden flecked soulful eyes. They are just brown. If you are desperate for an adjective to help picture him, it’d be “medium.”

I walked in and moved up to the counter as he stepped into place at the register. He began poking in his number and I began digging through my purse for my wallet. Somewhere in the depths of my purse, I heard my phone ding. A text, maybe? A new email?

“Good morning. How are you?” he recited, eyes on the screen in front of him.
“Fine, thanks,” I quickly replied. “I’ll have a…”

My hand was on my wallet, but I had seen my phone, and now I had the urge to pull it out and check that alert. I knew I could order and check it, but the flurry of thoughts scampering about in my brain gave me a millisecond of pause. Starbucks noises, foam, chairs scraping, an order coming in at the drive thru, phone dings, the zipper on my wallet and then again, just in my head I heard, “Good morning. How are you?” I set my wallet down and placed both hands on top of it and looked at him.

“Wait….I’m sorry,” I began.

Those just brown eyes met mine as I gave that little apology.

“I am good. How are you?”

He smiled and gave a quiet little chuckle.

“I am good, too, thanks.”

I smiled back and placed my order and we both went on about our day.

I am telling you about this almost nothing conversation with a boy with just brown eyes because in that moment I had this thought. How often do I casually rush through moments where of connection? Does someone have to be particularly interesting or the best and brightest to capture my attention? Or could it be that every person is someone who deserves eye contact and just basic consideration from me?

I have been thinking a lot lately about the impact of social media and technology on our culture. I heard a phrase from our pulpit at church over the past month,

“We live in a world that has never been more connected,
yet never felt more isolated.”

-Adrian Mills

I have thought of the implications of that, thought about the tremendous numbers of millennials and of our children who are struggling with anxiety and depression. I think through the scientific design of our species and others, that humans are, as I recently heard us called, “herd animals.” If not herds, we certainly are pack animals.

As I drove in this morning, listening to Rhythms For Life, Rebekah and Gabe Lyons’s podcast on connection over loneliness, I remembered those meeting those just brown eyes and that chuckle as we both flipped the switch from canned to genuine conversation. It took me to one last word, spoken by the person who I always want to have the last word in my life,

“DO YOU SEE THIS WOMAN?”

Jesus – Luke 7:44

I have more reflections on this passage that you can find in a post I wrote a few years ago, Do You See This Woman? which I invite you to read.

I am going to continue to think on these things, on connection and technology, on how I can be a part of the solution, on how I might need to change things in my own life.

I could use some feedback though, or some reassurance that we’re all in this together.

In your life, do you feel like the pull to the shallow connection technology provides is so much stronger than the pull to genuine connection?

How do you make keep that in balance in your life?

This is a conversation worth having, and it is a conversation worth having at depth, both online and in real life, face to face, your just brown eyes with my just blue-green eyes.