S#52: Have some delicious delivered to your house

Food is good. Food at home is better. Food at home with no dishes is one of the great pleasures of the modern age. I had Chinese this time.

Mmm. . . duck and mushroom sauce. . .

Here’s a link to a short story I wrote called “The Misbehaving Mountain”:

http://www.onthepremises.com/issue_05/story_05_4.html

And here’s a link to my other blog, where I talked about the four greatest modern books for children (trying to figure out how the writers made their work so awesome in order to improve mine):

http://felicitybloomfield.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/the-first-ten-pages/

In other news this month’s twittertale, “Peace Hostage” is set in a real historical setting – warring tribes in West Papua (now called Irian Jaya). Papua has literally hundreds of distinct languages, so some Christians have decided to live with various tribes (assuming the tribes want them there), learn their language, and write an alphabet for it. They then teach people to read and write, and they translate the New Testament into that language.

One particular translator, Don Richardson, believes that every culture in the world has redemption analogies – echoes of the Jesus story – hidden inside it. He worked with the Sawi tribe, who valued deceit as a virtue, and was horrified when he translated the bit in the Bible about Judas betraying Jesus through friendship. All the Sawi cheered at such a great act of deception. He tried to talk to them about the idea that deception ruins friendships, but they were unimpressed.

In the meantime, the Sawi fought with other tribes in the area, and the violence was worsening. Don asked the chief repeatedly to stop the fighting, but the chief said Don didn’t know what he was asking.

At last it became so risky that Don and his family decided to leave the area. The chief stopped him, and said he would stop the fighting. That was when Don learned the price of peace – the chief’s son.

Each of the chiefs involved gave up their first-born son into the other chief’s custody. This was the only way to ensure peace. The child was called the peace child. If the peace was broken, the child would be killed.

As a Christian, Don immediately saw the peace child as an analogy for Jesus – God’s son coming to live with us, so we could be reconciled to God. When he said as much to the Sawi, they were shocked.

They understood exactly what such a sacrifice meant – and the absolute worst thing a person could do as a Sawi person was to deceive or kill a peace child.

The Sawi tribe is now 70% Christian.

I first heard that story when I was ten years old.

This picture is from Flickr.com