John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

 

Fall on your knees – English

Caer de rodillas – Spanish

Spadnie na kolana – Polish

Dao zai ni de xigai (I think) Chinese

Cadere in ginocchio – Italian

Taqae ealaa rukbatayk – Arabic

Cadent hostem supplex – Latin

 

Today in my disability bus my first run was jammed packed as I was taking shoppers to the North Riverside Mall so they could do some Christmas shopping. The first woman on my bus was Emily. She is Chinese but we call her Emily because we cannot pronounce her real name.  It sounds like Emily so we get away with it.   The next person I picked up was Betty whose parents came from Poland and she claims she will speak Polish sometimes only as a way to memorialize her parents who are now gone.  Then there was good old Rosa who speaks excellent English but I rarely hear it.  She is proud of her heritage and speaks Spanish as much as she can get away with.  Then there is Ralph who is in wheel chair and was born in Italy.  He claims he speaks good English but the only words I recognize are S—of—B—ch S—t.  I think it is a universal language.  Of course there was Ricardo who claims to be Muslim but says he loves Jesus.  If there is such a thing as a Catholic Muslim that is Ricardo.  He even speaks fluent Arabic.

 

So I am traveling down Cermak Avenue with my happy Christmas shopping bunch all tightly knitted together in close fellowship and I have the radio tuned into  93.9 FM which you Chicagoans will recognize as the 24 hours Christmas music radio station.  On comes Feliz Navidad  and of course Rosa has to start singing along in her totally off key voice.  Before long the others join in, probably to drown her out.   So we have this happy bunch singing along with Christmas joy.  After that song ended the next song was Celine Dion’s version of O Holy Night.  You know that song, that is the one with the spine tingling Fall on your knees where, when you get to that part you really come on with it.   I attended a function last Saturday where everyone was signing Christmas Carols and when they got to O Holy Night it seems the only words they knew was Fall on your knees.  They had to go to their smart phones to look it up. I found some even mistakenly take the title of the song to be Fall on your knees. But when they found it on their smart phones they started to sing it. It was little weak at first but when they hit Fall on your knees I mean the rafters shook as the old Pentecostals used to say.  Sunday I attended a Spanish church where, for the most part, the service was in English. They also sang Fall on Your Knees uh, I mean, O Holy Night.  When they got to the  Fall on your knees part, they proved to be true Pentecostals.  Although, I noticed many of them were saying Caer de rodillas.  I guess sometimes you can express your heart better when you sing in your own native language.

 

Well, when O Holy Night came on over the radio in my disability bus, old Rosa started to sing along only she was singing in Spanish. Not to outdone Emily started to sing the song in Chinese, Betty was singing it in her sentimental Polish and even Ralph started to sing it in Italian, at least I hope that was what he was singing.  Suddenly Ricardo joined in with his Arabic and when they reached Fall on your knees Celine Dion was the only one singing in English.  Everyone else sang Fall on your knees in their own language.  I chose Latin as I was the only non-Catholic in the bus (Ricardo claiming to be half Catholic which is as likely as half a pregnancy).  I just felt sorry that ceremonial language was so quickly abandoned by these fine Catholics.

 

I guarantee no one has ever heard Fall on your knees sung like it was sung in my bus. It was absolute chaos and yet so beautiful.  Everyone was filled with real Christmas joy or maybe it was the joy of the Lord.  You see, today was a downer for me and as I trudged off to my disability bus I prayed and ask God if He could share some of this Christmas joy with me.  Well He did and it seems everyone on my bus got the overflow.  We arrived at North Riverside Mall and everyone got off the bus filled with the Christmas spirit and the joy of the Lord.

 

Oh did I tell you about the Jewish couple on my bus today. They are brother and sister and when they got off the bus they handed me a Christmas present, a box filled with all sorts of chocolate  diabetic decadences and they gave me a chag molad samea’h (Merry Christmas in Hebrew).  Usually I just get a chag samea’h from my Jewish friends (happy holiday).

 

I had a few minutes down time when I dropped my party off at the mall so I parked in the parking lot, went to the back of my bus and fell on my knees. As I said, the day started off as a real downer, actually the whole holiday season is downer for me. But the Lord saw fit to reach down and give this old language teacher a special little Christmas gift for which I thank Him for as well as the gift he gave thousand years ago. I suddenly found myself singing a song I used to sing in beginner’s church;

 

Jesus Loves the little children

All the children of the world

Red and yellow black and white

They are precious in His sight

Jesus loves the little children of the world.

 

I then thought of John 3:16: “For God so love the world.”   Why did Jesus say the world?  Why not mankind?  I looked in the Greek and the word for world is kosmos. Bet you can guess what English word comes from that.   This word really means the world system, worldly affairs, but it has been used in extra Biblical literature like Aristotle to express mankind.  This would have really upset the Pharisees because like many Baptist I know they felt they and the Jews who followed the law were the only ones who would make it into paradise.  Jesus really blew a hole in that one because He pointed out that God loves everyone in every system or affairs of this world and that His salvation was for all mankind.

 

I looked at this word in the Aramaic, the language that I believe Jesus spoke and I found an odd word used in the Pershitta for world.  It is the word ‘olama which is usually rendered as eternity. In a very limited sense it means mankind and only if it is to reference people who will live forever.  I wondered why Jesus would use that word and not adama or isha.  I started thumbing through the Talmud and there I discovered where in the Aramaic there is a sort of play on this word ‘olama where you could use it as an adjective.  Thus you would say God forever loved mankind that he gave His only son.

 

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