A little over a year ago, I visited a Korean church here on Okinawa with my friend. She explained that the service would be entirely in Korean, but she said not to worry, she would translate. She brought along a hymnal with the Korean on one page and the English on the other. She translated the welcome time and a few announcements, including the one that the regular pastor was on vacation and they had a visiting Japanese pastor, who would be translated into Korean. My friend looked a little worried for a moment but assured me she would then translate everything into English for me. What could go wrong?
She told me which passage he was preaching from, and we settled in. The pastor spoke in Japanese, which was then translated into Korean. My friend would lean over and summarize what was said, and other times, she just pointed to the verse in the Bible. I waved her off after about the tenth exchange and just focused on listening. I listened first to the Japanese pastor, whose passion and inflection surprised me, and then to the Korean translator, who was animated and nodding as he spoke. It occurred to me that God hears all these languages every minute of every day. It doesn’t overwhelm Him, and His grace is the same in any language.
By the end of the service, I was overwhelmed with joy. Even though it was not the passage the pastor was preaching from, I felt like the woman who stretched out in faith to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe. For a morning, I was that woman—stretched out, praying, knowing if I could just touch Jesus’ hem, I could be healed. At the end of the service, the Korean translator asked if we would all sing “Awesome God” in English. They blasted it through the tiny hall over and over until I thought my chest would burst. It was sacred space.
God, give me ears to hear and eyes to see what begs for compassion in every language around me today.
