Walking in Faith 依靠神

Christians always talk about "living by faith" which is easy when I can see ahead, but that’s not really faith 並不是信仰, is it? It’s not quite so easy when I have to rely on God when I don’t really see the answer.

Last week I had a request from a friend to translate 從中文翻成英文 for a Chinese Christian leader at a Korean crusade 韓國人的佈道會. Now let me say that I do speak Chinese and English pretty well (and am modest) but as I have said in past posts direct translation is an art that requires skill. I found out that he was a fairly famous leader, and a nice guy, so I put pressure on myself to do a good job. Then I found out that he had a fairly heavy regional accent in Chinese 東北的腔調, think of a non-native speaker of English trained in the U.S. listening to a thick cockney accent 倫敦老百姓的某种腔調. So, I prayed and worried, not necessarily in that order, throughout the night before. But I realized that as I felt that the Lord had given me this task to do, he would give me the strength to do it. I just had to trust.

The next morning I arrived at the hotel where the crusade was held and was told that, no we weren’t meeting here in a small room, we were meeting at the convention center 會議中心 across the street. So, I walked in to the meeting hall to the front of more than 1100 people who were waiting eagerly to hear the speaker. Our brave believer is shocked and prays intensely. There would be translation into Korean 韓國話 and into Japanese 日語 as well. ...more intense prayer. These translations would of course all depend on my translation into English first. ...even more intense prayer. I saw people I knew who said they really expected me to do a good job. ...tongue tied and more prayer.

I was thankful those 50 minutes flew by 五十分鐘很快就過去了and a meaningful translation was given. At least I could hear a lot of ‘amens’ and the audience said they were moved. The Lord was faithful.