Christian Music #5 Multilingual Worship

I was on top of a church in Chicago with brothers and sisters from the Dominican Republic who were teaching me to worship Jesus in a language that was not my mother tongue.  "Christo es la respuesta para el mundo hoy, sobre el no hay nada, El es nuetro Rey."

Jesus has always been big, but multilingual worship has helped me to recognize that Jesus Christ is bigger than my hometown or my country.  Jesus is bigger than America.  This may seem like a simple lesson.  But for me, and I suspect for others, this is an important lesson.

In Acts 2 Luke the author chose to write it all in Greek, but the words of worship to God were multilingual.   When the Holy Spirit came down, worship was in more than one language.  The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic.  The New Testament was written in Greek.

I went to Israel and Greece and heard the worship of God in a language I did not understand.  I went to Kenya and heard, "Yesu ni wangu wauzima wamilele, wauzima, wamilele, wauzima wamilele."


  I went further into Kenya and was heard in the mountains, "Mwathani agosho."  I went south in Nyanza province in Kenya and heard many songs and "Eenookoe agongwe!"  began to mean something to me.

In praising God in English, the tongue I learned from my mother, I feel as an adult worshipping Jesus Christ.  In praising God in Spanish, Swahili, igiKuria, Kikiuyu, and other languages foreign to me have taught me to praise God like a child, being taught by others how to praise God.

If we shy away from the falling and tripping and stumbling of praising the Father in other tongues, could it be that we are too "adult" to become like a little child and enter into the kingdom of heaven.   Or in the tripping and stumbling of worshiping the Father in other languages, and we falling into the lap of the Father who cuddles us like a child, for we are His children, and He is our Father.