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GOD CHOSE THEM?
Jeffrey said the following words as he contemplated the overwhelming nature of God’s concern for his people as Martha and he checked the Apal translation of I Peter 1:1.
“Do you mean that God chose them and then He looked after them even when they left their own land and lived as rootless (transient) people in all of these other lands – Ponɨtusɨ, Galesia, Kapadosia, Esia and Bitinia? The spirits that rule the land where we live would not do that. Our ancestors worshipped them, but if our ancestors left their own land, they were on their own. The spirit they worshipped would not help them. Also, if someone from our own clan grew up in town and then later came back to the land of their father, the spirit that rules that land would not like them. They would make them sick, give them sores and do bad things to them because they had not grown up there in that land. God is really different. He is not like the spirits our ancestors worshipped.”
I do not think that I have ever thought much about 1 Peter 1:1, which in the NIV says, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia ….” To me it was just who wrote the letter and to whom he wrote the letter and after that I was ready to move on to the main part of the letter.
Translating this verse into the Apal language, however, involved making clear many of the underlying assumptions that are in this verse, i.e., that they had lived in their own land and then left their own land and had gone and lived in each of these other lands. The Apal version of this verse is composed of 12 sentences since each of the 5 locations had to be put in a separate sentence to make it clear. It was in the process of sorting out a tedious, repetitive, grammatically complex construction that Jeffrey realized that God is not the same as the spirits his ancestors worshipped.
Listening to his expression of amazement reminded me that God can even use tedious grammatically complex translations to communicate his incomparable love to the Apal people in Papua New Guinea. It also reminded me that I serve a great God and that He watches over me whether I am in the village or traveling in other countries. I assumed that everyone knew that, but for the Apal that is one of the amazing attributes of God.
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