You know the hymn, ‘How Great Thou Art.’ Everybody knows it. It was written by a guy named Carl Boberg in Sweden. He was coming home after some kind of service, and there was a thunderstorm. The kind we’ve had the last few days. And when it passed over, he looked out at everything being fresh and green and alive, and he wrote a poem.
That poem got translated. Sweden to German. German to Russian. Russian to English. It traveled around the world. Billy Graham used it. And now you sing it on Sunday.
What strikes me is that somebody in Sweden looked at a thunderstorm and felt awe. And somebody else said, I know what that means. I know how to say that. And they translated it. And it kept traveling. Each person who touched it added something. Their language. Their voice. And it still said the same thing: when you really look at the world, when you really see creation, you can’t help but see God in it.
That’s what I want for us. Not to be original. But to be faithful. To see what God’s doing and then to say it in our language, in our lives, so somebody else can understand.
A reflection by Rev. MaryGean Cope