I am a mean man. What I mean is I am quite average. There is nothing special about me. I once knew a mean man. He was downright nasty. He was my next door neighbor when I was a child. I mean he wasn’t nice at all. I have a friend with limited means. It is difficult for him to pay his bills. What I mean is I am mean and my neighbor was mean but we are very different. He wasn’t mean because he was more than one standard deviation below the mean because of his meanness. My friend without enough means is actually quite nice.
English was not the mother tongue for almost a third of my students this past semester. It is no wonder they often did not understand my instructions. English is not the easiest language in the world. We laughed a lot as we tried to be patient with each other for often I did not understand them.
Right this moment God is listening to a million prayers in thousands of languages and He understands perfectly what each of us needs. Unlike the world’s air traffic controllers who all need to speak English so a Russian pilot can land in France, heaven doesn’t need us to learn a special language. God is so delighted to hear us any language will do. One really grand thing about God is He listens to our hearts. We don’t actually have to put our needs into the words of any language.
“The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” Romans 8:26
Written by Roger Bothwell on May 18, 2011
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org