REFLECTIONS
December 4, 2011
 
 
If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
1 Peter 4:11
 
 
Living Translation
 
Since its completion in 1611 the King James Version was the Bible that English speaking people read. As a boy, I came to believe that its prose and vintage English was the language God spoke and the speech we were supposed to use when we talked to him. But its language was not natural to me. The words were too Shakespearian and sentence construction that was not customary in the present day. So, I didn’t read it. Rather I learned the Bible from others through the stories they told me from it.
Mema was perhaps the best. At least she was the most persistent of my childhood mentors. She read me Bible stories almost every time I was with her; and if she wasn’t reading me a story she was teaching me something from the Bible. I am most grateful for her teaching and the many lessons I learned from her. Likely she had an influence on my interest in reading the Bible through once more readable versions became available. But looking back now, I can see that Mema’s influence reached beyond the stories she told.
Mema walked the talk. Oh I’ve been told of her imperfections, but her failings were not evident to me. To me she was believable because she lived the stories she told, and the lessons she taught were represented in the way she lived. Not once would she claim the old adage, “do as I say and not as I do.”  Mema lived what she taught.
Mema departed this world several decades ago, but as I reflect on her life today and its influence on mine, I recall that she taught from the King James Version. But her teachings had nothing to do with the vintage English printed on the pages. The lessons learned from her were founded in the way she lived. She was a living translation. And that is the version that made the difference.
If the Bible had not been updated into present day language, Mema’s life and the lives of other mentors in my life may have been the only Bible I ever read. The Bible, whatever version they may have used, provided the foundation for what they taught. But the power in their message came not from the words they spoke. The power of their message came because they were living translations of all they taught.
 
“You are the light of the world.”
RichardÌ

www.reflectingthesavior.org.


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