LISTEN ONLINEKaren, 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’.