WordLive - Year OneSample

Prepare: Consider the difference between God’s Word and human words. Babbling on Two thousand five hundred translators work to make sense of the 23 languages spoken at the headquarters of the European Union. Most of us don’t speak Portuguese or Lithuanian: to us it sounds like babble. It could be worse. The €300 million annual cost was perhaps considered worth it after reflection on the ruins out of which modern Europe emerged. Seventy years ago most of Europe was united under one supposed ‘master race’. Pride and fear Modern tyrannies have a good deal in common with the people of Babel. First, they are fiercely assertive, determined to make a name for themselves (v 4) when in truth the way to prosperity is through exalting the name of God (see Psalm 1). They seem to proceed from a mixture of pride and fear: they reach for the top while all the time looking over their shoulders. The actual quality of their work – bitumen and brick instead of mortar and stone – is fairly poor, and the word used for their planning suggests low, cunning devices rather than genuine, creative inspiration. The babblers-to-be think their tower is so splendidly high, but God even has to come down to look at it. Thank the Lord that in his mercy he has never allowed free rein to the proud imaginings of the human heart on this planet of ours (see also Luke 2:51). Respond: Compare the experience of someone at Babel with that of someone at Pentecost in Acts 2. http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-01-14