When I was young – not too long ago…, but I am talking about when I was really young – I had great difficulty in speaking. There was even some thought that I might be dumb (now I know that you probably think I don’t talk / write too clearly now, but I beseech you to keep your thoughts to yourselves). I think, now that I am an adult, it is related to some area of my brain that does not distiguish sounds too well. I was listening to a Spanish recording some while back and the person said ‘todas las veces’ (everytime) and for whatever reason I heard ‘todas las setas’ (all the mushrooms). So I stopped the recording, replayed, same phrase – all the mushrooms. Repeated it three times, then asked Gayle why are they saying ‘all the mushrooms’ it makes no sense. And yes she agreed, ‘that would make no sense!!!’ It is not too different in English. I was going to make some pancakes and was going to buy some bacon when Gayle asked ‘do we have any syrup’. I said ‘any suet?, why do we need that’. She repeated it three times, I got it on the third time. Childish talk…
Childish talk… My speech was probably almost indecipherable till I was 7+, due to (I think now) a defect in the sound discrimination area.
Childish talk…
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child (1 Cor. 13:11).
I think the heart of the Gospel is not ‘personal salvation’ (glad that is in there!!!) but a new world is here (better a new ‘creation’ is here). Each time we move forward with some sight on that, in my words ‘the transformation of this world’ we respond with childish talk. I think a lot of what is spoken and written about transformation of the world is child talk. Let’s be patient. The process to mature speech is slow.
It’s not unlike when people first get hold of prophecy. ‘I see a tremendous gift on you to bring down powers and transform the whole future of the world, I pronounce that the anointing that was on all the prophets of old has come upon you now, and because of that this is the greatest breakthrough time ever.’ Childish talk… Maybe it could have been ‘you do not carry too much, but throw the two coins you have into that abusive, oppressive temple treasure over there.’
Childish talk does give way to adult speech.
And this is exactly why I continue the seemingly passe pentecostal habit of speaking in tongues…in spite of all the places my brain seems to think it has a better grasp on things.
I’ve often thought the very first language anyone speaks is tongues…an “unknown” language that is spoken sounding like gibberish to the learned yet bespoken with absolute faith by the child.
Speaking in tongue reminds me that for all my 60+ years of life I am still a child…I know less than 1/2 the sum of everything I think I’ve learned about life.
The greatest gift language gave me was the ability to admit I was wrong.