Greetings in the Name of the Lord, 

I have been getting in the habit lately of doing my own translations of the Psalms for each week's call to worship. It is an opportunity to really immerse myself within the Word and capture the Psalmist's heart in new ways. It also helps me feel the poetry of the Psalms and scratches my own creative itch.

Within this poetic vein, I was surprised by a word I came across last week while translating Psalm 42, one that many are most likely familiar with, the one that starts with "As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God". It was the next line that really caught my attention though. The standard translation is "My soul thirsts for God, the Living God", but as I dug a little, I found the word "living" has within it a more nuanced meaning than just active or in motion as the english translation tends to suggest.  The Hebrew here is chay, which can be translated as alive, but it can also be translated to beast, and not the domesticated kind, but it can mean wild animal. It can also be translated as raw and even as life in totality.  There is a fullness in the Hebrew word that is somewhat lacking in the English translation. 

It makes me think about wildlife, wild animals, wild plants, even things like wild yeast. It stands in a certain amount of contrast with the word cultivated or domesticated. The biology teacher in me starts thinking about the plant nightshade, a common weed in our area, and one that is poisonous. Mesoamericans in central america, long before the arrival of europeans, took nightshade and were able to cultivate a vast number of domesticated strains, strains that produced what we now know as eggplants, tomatoes, potatoes and peppers. Wild nightshade has within it a great genetic diversity, a diversity that can be cultivated to produce various other plants with traits that are useful to humans. When I think of wild, I think about this, how wildness can hold so much potential for so many things, how in its being untamed, uncultivated, undomesticated, it can hold so many possibilities,

The Hebrew word chay and all its various uses reminds us that a living God is also in a way a wild God, a full God, an abundant God, a God full of limitless possibilities, possibilities that are not always anticipated or predicted. By using the adjective living, I have to imagine the Psalmists, who lived so much closer to the land than we can imagine, must have appreciated that to living was to be full beyond measure. 

I admit the translation is a subtle one, but as so much of our culture disconnects from a partnership with the soil and the land, it is important to be reminded time and again of a God that is not just active, but if I can be so bold, a God that is wild.  What would a wild God mean to you? Are you comfortable with using an adjective like wild with God? Does it expand your understanding of God and/or Creation to think of the wildness that is embedded in all life? Feel free to email me your thoughts, or set up a time to chat over coffee, I would love to hear what you think.  

In Peace, 

Mike