Santa Biblia
Category: Faith...
Posted Saturday, June 11, 2005 at 09:44 PM [GMT-6]

Despite several concerted attempts, my desire to learn to speak Spanish has come to nada. At best, I can string together bits of vocabulary (la silla es muy azul), and I've mastered a few critical sentences (Dondé es el baño?), but things like conjugating verbs might just as well be quantum physics.

Nevertheless, I love the beauty of the Spanish language. In fact, my favorite Bible -- the one I carry each Sunday to church -- is a bilingual version. Down one column is the New American Standard translation in English; down the other is La Biblia de Las Americas in Spanish. I'm better at reading Spanish than speaking it, and it helps to have the passages side-by-side so I can go back and forth to check on the hard words.

It also helps when the passage is familiar to the point of being second nature. In those cases, there's really no need to even glance at the English version, and I can enjoy the new (to me) presentation of the old familiar words.

Here's an example. I suspect that even if you don't know a lick of Español, you'll be able to identify this passage, probably by the end of the first line. But read through the whole thing, out loud if possible, and enjoy how millions of God's children read and hear His Santa Biblia.

Gracias, Dios, para sus muchas bendiciones.