tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437964542052755799.post1857376420243623939..comments2024-02-13T08:49:07.287-04:00Comments on 'Thought & Humor!': Scherpe Martelende Pijn!Professor Howdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12189934292678757335noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437964542052755799.post-79453125574863145392008-01-28T09:32:00.000-04:002008-01-28T09:32:00.000-04:00The Fortunes of LanguageIn Ayapan, Tabasco, a vill...The Fortunes of Language<BR/><BR/><BR/>In Ayapan, Tabasco, a village in southern Mexico, a tragedy is on the<BR/>horizon. As in any other city on any given day, two men have stopped<BR/>talking to each other; they say they have drifted apart and no longer wish<BR/>to speak. But unlike other cities and other feuding men, the elderly men<BR/>of Ayapan are the last two remaining speakers of the local Zoque language.<BR/> Without their attempts to keep the language alive, many fear the language<BR/>will soon become extinct. While the hope is that others will learn Ayapan<BR/>Zoque or that the men will choose to pass down the knowledge to their<BR/>families, those who study indigenous languages are all too aware of the<BR/>statistics. Across the world, the United Nations calculates, one language<BR/>disappears every two weeks. <BR/><BR/>Language specialists remind us that the loss of any language, however few<BR/>once spoke it, is no small loss. "Language death is symptomatic of<BR/>cultural death: a way of life disappears with the death of a language,"<BR/>note authors Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine. "The fortunes of<BR/>languages are bound up with those of its speakers."(1) When the critical<BR/>insight contained within a language is forgotten, an irreplaceable<BR/>resource has vanished from the world and its future generations, leaving<BR/>in its place a certain void. The cry to remember is often voiced by those<BR/>who foresee the darkened glimpse of a world that has forgotten. Such a<BR/>description is reminiscent of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth at the onset<BR/>on the story. "The world is changed," says Galadriel. "I feel it in the<BR/>water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once<BR/>was is lost, for none now live who remember it." <BR/><BR/>Since the biblical story is uttered simultaneously with a cry to remember,<BR/>it is not surprising that we should find the same quality in the prayers of<BR/>its characters. When Jehoshaphat stood up in the temple to pray in front<BR/>of the entire assembly, he was speaking a language that sought desperately<BR/>to remember the character of God. "O LORD, God of our fathers, are you not<BR/>the God who is in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. <BR/>Power and might are in your hand, and no one can withstand you. O our<BR/>God, did you not drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people<BR/>Israel and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend?" His<BR/>prayer was perhaps even a cry for God too to remember, to bear in mind the<BR/>Lord they had come to know, the relationship God had sought with them, the<BR/>history that existed between them. Speaking this common language and<BR/>story, bringing the acts of God in history to the forefronts of their<BR/>minds, Jehoshaphat then cried to God to act among them in the present. "O<BR/>our God, will you not judge...the vast army that is attacking us? We do<BR/>not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you" (2 Chronicles 20:6-12). <BR/>Prayer is a language of remembrance. It is taught by those who have gone<BR/>before us, those who have witnessed the power of God in history, those who<BR/>were commanded to remember and now call us to do the same. <BR/><BR/>Speaking this language, teaching our children the fortunes bound within<BR/>it, we remember the person of God, and we remember the people we are<BR/>before the throne of heaven. Standing before a religious crowd, Jesus<BR/>offered a parable about prayer. "Two men went up to the temple to pray,<BR/>one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and<BR/>prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other<BR/>men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. I<BR/>fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.' But the tax collector<BR/>stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his<BR/>breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner'" (Luke 18:10-13). To<BR/>the shock of the crowd, Jesus then revealed the one who spoke the language<BR/>of heaven: "I tell you that this tax collector, rather than the other, went<BR/>home justified before God" (14).<BR/><BR/>Prayer is a language whose fortunes keep before us the person and<BR/>character of God, even as it keeps before us our own need for the kingdom<BR/>and its mercies. So too, it is a language that helps us remember the<BR/>whole story. <BR/><BR/>On the night before he was placed in the hands of those who would lead him<BR/>to death, Jesus prayed that God would take away the task that stood before<BR/>him. In prayer, Jesus pled with God to spare him; in prayer he sought the<BR/>Father's intervention; yet in prayer he remembered the entire story, such<BR/>that even on the Cross he was able to pray for those who had no idea what<BR/>they were doing. On his knees in Gethsemane, Jesus remembered our<BR/>desperate need for his sacrifice. He concluded his prayer to the Father,<BR/>"Yet not what I will, but what you will" (Mark 14:36). At these words,<BR/>Christ forever bound within the biblical language a fortune we ought never<BR/>to forget. <BR/><BR/>Jill Carattini is senior associate writer at Ravi Zacharias<BR/>International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.<BR/><BR/><BR/>(1) Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine, Vanishing Voices (Oxford:<BR/>Oxford University Press, 200), 7.<BR/><BR/><BR/>-------------------------------------------------------------------<BR/> Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM)<BR/>"A Slice of Infinity" is aimed at reaching into the culture with words of<BR/>challenge, words of truth, and words of hope. If you know of others who<BR/>would enjoy receiving "A Slice of Infinity" in their email box each day,<BR/>tell them they can sign up on our website at<BR/>http://www.rzim.org/slice/slice.php. If they do not have access to the<BR/>World Wide Web, please call 1-877-88SLICE (1-877-887-5423).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com