Building on the Solid Rock: Making God Big

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised:

Our Quechua has improved tremendously during the seven weeks that we have been here. Thank you so much for your prayers, and I hope that you will continue to pray for us in this area of great need!

Prayer Necessities for the Skimmers:

1. Please continue to be in prayer for Brooklynn (pictured here with Amy). She is leaving to return to Europe

this week to spend Christmas with her family. Pray that God would continue to work in her life to draw her to Himself.

2. We have only 1-1/2 weeks more here in Cochabamba and will return to Sucre on Dec. 23. Pray that we would finish our time here well, with remaining focused on language learning and with saying goodbye to different friends we've made here.

3. Continue to pray for our men's team - Efrain, Javier, Roberto, and David - as they investigate new areas in which to work.

Inquiring Minds Wanna Know (Bonus for the Readers):

I started reading the Bible in Quechua a couple of weeks ago, and it was pretty intimidating at first. Aw, who am I kidding? It still is. :)

But it's also really enlightening to read the Bible in another language. To my ethnocentric, "English is best" way of thinking, I ought to be able to get everything that I need from the Word of God, and I never thought it would help to read the Bible in any other language. Why would I ever need to do that?

But then I read John 14:6 in Spanish, and it blew me away. In English, Jesus says in that verse:

"I am the way and the truth and the life."

Pretty straightforward, right? But it's even greater in Spanish. There are two verbs in Spanish that can translate the English verb "to be." One is used to describe temporary states like illness or location, but the other, the one used to translate "I am" in this verse, is used for things of permanence, for inherent characteristics like your gender or nationality. So the fact that Jesus IS the way, the truth, and the life is not just some fleeting thing that could easily change. It is an inherent part of Who He is, and it is not going to change. Very revealing.

So, when I started reading the Word in Quechua, I was excited to see what new things I would learn. I started in Luke, and it didn't take me long to find this one. In the English NIV, it says this:

"And Mary said: 'My soul glorifies the Lord.'" (Lk. 1:46)

In its context, this begins Mary's hymn of praise to the Lord when she goes to visit Elisabeth after being told that she will give birth to Jesus. In Quechua, the word used to translate the word expressed by the English word "glorify" here is the verb "jatunchay." I know that doesn't mean anything to you right now, but let me break it down a little further. The Quechua word "jatun" word means "big," and "-chay" is a suffix that means "to make someone or something do something." So the literal translation of "jatunchay" would be "to make big."

Have you ever really thought about what the word "glorify" means? I don't think I had. I've grown up in church, and it's been a part of my churchy vocabulary since I was a little kid. "Let's glorify God this morning by singing hymn number 166!" Or "To God be the glory." I'm not making fun. I'm just saying we throw a lot of words around without really thinking about what they mean. Words like "glorify" and "exalt" and even "church."

So it hit me like a ton of bricks that Quechua translates "glorify" as "to make big"! Mary was saying that her soul was making God big. It was doing everything it could to make Him seem bigger in the eyes of other people.

I realized a few years ago that my purpose on this earth - and the purpose of every other person and thing that God has created - is to glorify Him. In essence, my purpose is to make God big.

Because He is.

We so often make Him so small. We try to fit God into a one-hour time frame on Sunday morning when He should consume our entire lives. We offer up a beautifully worded prayer asking Him to fix our problems but then immediately forsake following His ways as we try to solve them ourselves. We sing, "Wherever He leads, I'll go" on Sunday, but we're quick to doubt His power when He leads us down a road of suffering on Monday.

But He's the same BIG God today that He was when He parted the Red Sea. He's the same BIG God Who sent fire from heaven to consume Elijah's offering and all the water that drenched it. And He's the same BIG God Who raised His only Begotten from the dead.

And yet, somehow, He's still big enough to dwell inside you if you're His follower. Now, if that's not a reason to shout His praises in the streets, to make Him big before everyone you know, I don't know what is!

The old King James version of Luke 1:46 actually translates the verse much better:

"And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord."

To whom will you make Him big today?