God's Word Does Not Return Empty

Paula and Bill

During this year that Bill and I are at home in Boston, we had the opportunity to join in the bicentennial celebration of Adoniram Judson’s send-off to Burma at Salem Tabernacle Church. During the service we heard a short summary of Judson’s life. This reminded me that though we now celebrate Judson as one of the great missionaries of all time, during the course of his life his work could be judged a failure. Though he labored diligently, he made hardly any converts among the Burmese to whom he had gone to preach. But he did persevere in translating the Bible into Burmese. Even though there are still few Christian believers among ethnic Burmese today, the Bible that Judson translated was used to tell the gospel story to the many minority groups who live in Burma. The Karen ethnic group especially took the gospel message to heart, and today large numbers of Karen people are Christians. When Western missionaries had to leave Burma in the 1960s, the Karen decided it was up to them to continue bringing the gospel message to the unreached people groups of northern Burma. As a result, most of the people groups in this region have flourishing churches. Many of them come to us and our colleagues, asking us to help them translate the Bible into their own mother languages. This is the legacy of Adoniram Judson’s Burmese Bible.

As people who help in Bible translation, Bill and I spend a lot of time sitting at our desks, consulting books and deciding on questions concerning translation issues. Sometimes it is hard to answer the question, “How has your work impacted the people of Southeast Asia?” Often we don’t know. In many situations the impact is still to come. We have to keep on working in faith that God will work through his Word, changing hearts and changing cultures. The story of Adoniram Judson and the way his Bible translation into Burmese has impacted the faith of so many people is so encouraging, because it reminds us that God is in charge of results, not us. Isaiah 55:10-11 says: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth; it will not return to me empty but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” This is God’s promise that we are trusting in as we prepare to return to Thailand and continue helping people as they translate the Word of God into their own mother languages.

Paula is a Bible Translator in Southeast Asia