There's no easy way to describe my job to someone who I've just met, but I have to start somewhere.
This inevitably leads to the question, "So are you actually translating the Bible into another language?"
At which point I smile to myself, and then launch into some confusing explanation of how I don't actually sit at my desk in my office in East Belfast with the Bible and a dictionary in some minority language and translate it, but rather that I work in Mobilisation, which involves sharing our vision for making God's Word available to everyone in the world in the language of their heart and encouraging people to get involved.
But it's not a completely daft question - do I actually translate the Bible? It's got me thinking, don't all of us who know and love God and the Bible have a responsibility to 'translate' it?
God loved us so much and wanted us to know him, his love for us, his character as a completely trustworthy, kind, gentle, just, forgiving, compassionate Creator and Father God, that he sent his Son Jesus to show us himself. Jesus did that, and we can find out all about his life in the Bible. Not only that, the whole Bible is the story of God reaching out to us in love.
But we know that Jesus died, then he didn't stay dead but came back to life, and now he is still alive but not here on earth any more. He is now with our Father God outside the space and time of this world as we know it. But God has not completely left us here, because now the Holy Spirit is here on earth with us, but he's not only with us, he is IN us.
So if Jesus was in effect God living and walking in this world, and now the Holy Spirit is here as God's presence in this world, and the Holy Spirit lives in and through us... surely that means that we respresent God on earth.
Which could be thought of a bit like Bible translation. Translation takes something that is in an incomprehensible language and puts it into a language that can be understood by the reader. God is beyond our comprehension, but Jesus is accessible to us. He's real, he's human, he cried, he got hungry, and thirsty. A recent poll revealed that the 'dead' person that the British public most want to meet is Jesus Christ.
So where am I going with this? If the Holy Spirit, the presence of God on earth today, lives in and through us, then we have the awesome challenge of making God accessible to the people around us by letting the Holy Spirit live through us. I have hardly begun to understand the enormity of what this means. But I want to do it. I want to be real with people. I want them to see God in me and to see God's love for them in me. I'm still human and I'm still selfish and I still want things my way, but if I can keep taking steps to give up control of my life and let the Holy Spirit take charge, then God will be able to respresent himself through me.
So do I translate the Bible? Yes, I do. And that mean you do to. So let's do it!
Oh, and if you'd like to be involved in the kind of Bible translation that actually involves taken the written Bible and helping making it available in other languages, then get in touch with us!
(I would like to acknowledge that these thoughts have not all come from my own brain - many thanks to our ED Eddie Arthur, my boss John Hamilton, and my housemate Leanne for sharing your ideas with me. Oh, and thanks to John for the cartoon!)
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