Language Lessons

  
 
The language that God speaks is a language class I have been attending for most of my life.  My progress in these lessons goes in fits and starts.  There are times when I think I am beginning to master it but all too often I feel that it is a foreign language.
 
Five years ago I went to Italy and ended up staying there for a year.  The limited words I knew meant that it was impossible to have conversations.  I felt unsafe riding the trains into Naples, knowing I couldn’t ask for directions or for help if I needed it.
Registering for lessons was the only sensible thing to do.  So at 7:30 every morning, Monday to Friday, I headed off from the town of Castellammare and took the hour train ride into Garibaldi station in the heart of Naples.  The temperature there in June was rising above 80 degrees (25 C) at that time of the morning.  Weaving in and out of cars, crossing 8 lanes of Neapolitan traffic, dodging street sellers and winding my way up the narrow streets of the old town became a wonderfully familiar routine. 
 
Language lessons – yes I was talking about language lessons.  When we start school we already know how to speak and have built a vocabulary.  We don’t understand the grammatical structure yet but we can have conversations, ask for what we need, and have begun to build relationships at this tender age.  
 
In a country with a whole new language you cannot ask for anything in words, you cannot share your thoughts and your heart, you cannot easily build relationships without a common language.  You feel helpless and at times incredibly stupid. I could speak a language, my own, but I could not communicate with everyone around me.
 
And so I took language lessons.  I learned a few words and would eagerly listen for them as others spoke.  I repeated them over and over.  Then added new words eagerly listened for them and repeated them, along with the previous ones, over and over.  Slowly conversations had familiarity and I could add a few words here and there – communication was happening.  Over and over, listening for the familiar, using the words and beginning to participate.  I had a stronger sense of security as I explored various towns, joined in conversations with people, and relationships began to build.  The last area that comes with a new language is sharing your emotions and your heart. I can only do this in my own familiar tongue.
 
God’s language is learned one word at a time, repeated over and over until we hear it, know what it means and can respond to it.  We begin to use it, to talk with God and build a relationship, and it expands to include others.  Yet even after all these years I am not fluent in God’s language of love, forgiveness, prayer and community.  I speak it haltingly and awkwardly.   Most frustrating of all is that it is language of the heart which I long to speak with ease, with fluidity, with conviction and with grace.
 
Lord God continue to teach me Your language. I want to learn every nuance of it.  I want my conversations with You to be from the heart, mine to Yours, Yours to mine.  I want courage when the language lesson is tough going, and always to be able to enjoy and share Your language of laughter, joy, of compassion in sorrow, of encouragement, of honesty and of truth.