Holy, Holy, Holy

Although the key terms workshop is over and things have settled down a bit in the translation department, our work with those key words continues. Yesterday I sent two translation teams out to the community to test some of those ways they want to translate those key terms.

One key term in particular stuck out to me as I was helping a translator prepare for the community testing. That word is holy. I think our first reaction if we tried to define holy would be something along the lines of 'without sin' or 'without blemish'. But when we look at some of the ways that word 'holy' is used in the Bible our definition seems to be missing something. There are holy places, like the temple, there are holy articles, there are holy people, God's name is holy etc. What is the common denominator between all these things? It's not that they are perfect or without blemish but rather that they are all set apart for God. They are holy because God is holy.

So when it comes down to the very basic definition we see that holy really has to do with the fact that God is completely distinct from everything else. He is totally unique and that is what holy means. Everything is holy only when it is set apart distinctly for God. Along with that meaning we can get other meanings, such as the idea of being blameless or sinless but only because God is sinless. Otherwise the word for 'pure' carries the idea of being sinless.

I think that many of us, myself included, sing about God being holy or his name being holy without ever really stopping to think what that means. But if someone would ask us to define exactly what we mean by 'holy' we wouldn't know what to say. This is a bit of what happened to me because all the languages we work with have no word for 'holy'. So I had to explain what 'holy' means in that context and to do that, I had to understand what it means. It was a good challenge to me to really think about some of these words that roll so easily off my tongue.

Why I Do What I Do

Recent events in our translation department have caused me to re-evaluate why am I here in Tanzania. Before I came to Tanzania I had many reasons for wanting to be part of a Bible translation project, the most important one being that I believed God was calling me to this work. But I had many other reasons along with that. I wanted to do something with my life that would last forever. I wanted to invest in people. I wanted people to be able to read the Bible in their own languages. I wanted to live in another culture and learn another language. I wanted to be a part of what God was doing, somewhere else in the world. Never did I dream how easily those reasons could be disposed of.

Somewhere along the way it stopped being fun learning another language and culture and become increasingly frustrating, feeling out of place and never able to communicate well. People didn’t always respond as I hoped and I didn’t feel like I was investing in them. It’s difficult work translating and sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever have a good translation that people can read in their mother tongue. But most of all recently, I have discovered that people who I thought were committed to this work, aren’t all that committed and it makes me question why I am still here.

I am still here because I have one reason left to be here and that is that God called me. In the end it boils down to the fact that my work out here does not depend on the commitment of Tanzanians or other colleagues. It doesn’t depend on whether people want me to be here or whether they like me or not. It doesn’t depend on my personal fulfillment or desire to live in another culture. It depends on the fact that the God whom I serve and have dedicated my life to, asked me to work here and I need to obey. That’s it.

So whether I am struggling with my ministry or in my personal life, I will stay. And I know more than ever how faithful God is and that we will walk together through these times when everything seems to be coming apart at the seams. And His will will be done.