Translations

Mood: tired
What I'm Reading: The Left Behind series in German (and a dictionary, my new best friend)

The last couple of days have been really full. On Friday I met up with a group of friends from my German class to go swimming. At the pool we were surprised to find ourselves being (unwillingly) photographed by the local paper for a story. Later we grabbed dinner at Subway and headed to the theater to watch an indi movie about a couple of women struggling to make a living in Berlin (which has close to 20% unemployment). Finally, in the small hours of morning we headed to a pub to talk about deep questions before heading to bed.

Today I spent several hours talking with a friend about how we should respond to our enemies. Germany tends to be highly pacifistic, so this is a hard question to answer here. They believe that even enemies should be valued because of their humanity, but they see that they are not able to genuinely realize this ideal in their day-to-day interactions with the people around them.

My answer: Deep love for our enemies only comes through our realization that God has loved us even though we have treated Him as an enemy. My question: How do you communicate this truth to someone who does not trust God? Sometimes translation work goes so much deeper than a simple expression of words.