Rosetta Stone Rescue

Location: MUNICH, GERMANY


I am currently in the process of reading the entire Bible in a year. Two weeks behind, I decided to do some speed reading last night. I was in the first six chapters of John where he details Jesus’ miracles. It was almost midnight and I was bored with the miracles. I had heard them all before, watched them recreated at every Easter play and wanted to skip ahead to Psalms. So, I read Psalms instead and went to bed.

The following morning, right after I arrived at work, the economics specialist at work called me. He told my colleague and me to decide between ourselves who would go with our boss to meet with the CEO and CFO of a major German corporation. Since I was dressed up, I went. On the ride there, I was informed that the entire meeting would be conducted auf Deutsch. Well, I can write and read German at about a high school level and can speak German at about a 6 year-old's level. However, when it comes to hearing German, I might as well be a newborn whose mother has decided to start speaking gibberish to them. I hear “blah blah insert a word I know blah blah two more words understood blah blah blah blah. Danke”. Oh and to make the challenge more difficult, it was my job to write a review of the meeting following the meeting. I squeezed my eyes closed tightly and pleaded with God “to grant me the Rosetta Stone, even if it is only for 20 minutes. That is all I need to make sure I still have my job tomorrow morning”. We arrived at the meeting and were quickly escorted into the room. Let the German begin. And let the Miracle Meeting commence.

We all sat at a large oak table overlooking a beautiful skyline. I whispered another short prayer as the CEO and CFO started to speak. And I understood. I took notes as quickly as my brain could process and soon filled up an entire notepad page. This continued on for another ten minutes as they kept talking and I kept writing. Now, I didn’t fully understand every word; that would be a lie. However, I suddenly remembered all the vocabulary words from my three years of high school German. Feeling pretty impressed with myself, I started to laugh at their jokes and even attempted to comment on one such point. I assume God felt that it was his time to shine and not mine because the next time the CFO said something funny, I was the only one to laugh out loud. Now, this was no LOL. This was a roaring laugh. I’m sure I turned the color of crimson and slumped back into my chair. The meeting ended a few minutes later and we said goodbye. Once we were in the car, the driver started speaking in German. I turned to answer him and realized I didn’t understand what he had said. And just as quickly as I had understood, it was gone and I was once again hearing “blah”.

But what I did understand: God’s miracles are never boring. The Bible should be read earnestly. I need to pray more often. And prayers are answered. Just sometimes they are in a foreign language.