This
story from the Wycliffe Bible Translators was shared with me by friends who
minister with that organization. It’s such a beautiful illustration of God’s
unconditional love, I felt led to summarize it in this blog post.
Lee
Bramlett, a Wycliffe Bible translator, was working with the Hdi culture in
Cameroon, searching for God’s “footprint” in the history or daily life of this
people group. He was looking for a clue God had left to show the Hdi people who
he is and how he wants to relate to them.
One
night in a dream God impressed upon Lee to look at the word, ‘love.’ Through
his study of the language, Lee knew that almost all Hdi verb forms could end in
an i, an a, or u. However, the verb, ‘love,’ never showed the vowel u at the
end.
Lee
met with the Hdi translation committee and first asked them, “Can you ‘dvi’
(love) your wife?”
Their
answer was affirmative saying it meant the wife had been loved but the love was
gone.
Next
Lee asked, “Could you ‘dva’ your wife?”
“Yes,”
the men answered. “That kind of love depends on the wife’s actions. She would
be loved as long as she remained faithful and cared for her husband well.”
Then
Lee asked, “Could you ‘dvu’ your wife?”
The
men laughed. “Of course not,” they said. “If you said that, you would have to
keep loving your wife no matter what she did, even if she never got your water,
never made your meals. Even if she committed adultery, you would be compelled
to just keep on loving her. No, we would never say ‘dvu’.’ It just doesn’t
exist.”
The
Wycliffe translator sat quietly for a minute or so among the committee of
elders. “Could God ‘dvu people?” he asked.
More
silence. Then tears began to trickle down the weathered cheeks of the elders.
“Do you know what this would mean?” one asked. “This would mean that God kept
loving us over and over, century after century, while all that time we rejected
his great love. He is compelled to love us, even though we have sinned more
than any people.”
One
simple vowel and the meaning was changed from “I love you based on what you do
and who you are,” to “I love you based of who I am. I love you because of me
and not because of you”
God
had encoded the story of his unconditional love right into their language. For
centuries, the little word was there—unused but available, grammatically
correct and quite understandable. When the word was finally spoken, it called
into question their entire belief system.
I
wonder how many people in our acquaintance would have their belief system
turned upside down if they truly understand God’s unconditional love—impossible
to earn, but given so freely.
The
wonderful postscript to this story is that the entire New Testament has been
translated and printed. Now the 29,000 Hdi speakers can read in Ephesians 5:25,
“Husbands, ‘dvu’ your wives just as Christ ‘dvu-d’ the church.”
