Follow the links below to find a selection of message illustrations for the first reading and psalm

• Exodus 3:1: “Wilderness” in Mairasi (Papua New Guinea): “a place where noisiness is cut off,” Wantoat (Papua New Guinea): “uninhabited place,” Shipibo-Conibo (Peru): “where no house is,” Pa’o Karen (Myanmar): “jungle” (denoting a place without any towns, villages and tilled fields), Cherokee (USA): “far away downstream.”
• Exodus 3:1: “Moses tending Jethro's sheep”: Hand colored Japanese stencil print on momigami by Sadao Watanabe (1972).
• Exodus 3:2: “angel” – translated in Shipibo-Conibo (Peru) as “word bringer,” in Michoacán Nahuatl (Mexico) as “clean (=holy) helper of God,” in Wè Northern (Côte d'Ivoire): “the Lord’s soldier.” Also many other translations.
• Exodus 3:2: “Burning Bush“ -- Artwork by Indian artist Paul Koli (1984); stained-glass window in the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Chiang Mai, Thailand; stained-glass window from the Marienkirche, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, of the 14th century.
• Exodus 3:2 et al.: First mention of YHWH (LORD) in Exodus. There are many, many different ways to translate it (you can find all of them right here). One particularly interesting approach is in Protestant Chinese Bible translations where “YHWH,” the name of God, is translated as yehehua 耶和華 (“Jehovah”). According to Chinese naming conventions, yehehua could be interpreted as Ye Hehua, in which Ye would be the family name and Hehua -- “harmonic and radiant” -- the given name. In the same manner, Ye would be the family name of Jesus (transliterated as yesu 耶穌) and Su would be the given name. Because in China the children inherit the family name from the father, the sonship of Jesus to God the Father, yehehua, would be illustrated through this.
• Exodus 3:5: “Holy ground” is translated as “you are before me and I am good” in Morelos Nahuatl (Mexico) and “where I myself am and I am God” in Rincón Zapotec (Mexico).
• Exodus 3:5: “Holy” is translated in many South Pacific (and other) languages as “taboo” (which is where the English word comes from). Steiner (1956) says “The most common form of the word is tapu. That is the Maori, Tahitian, Marquesan, Rarotongan, Mangarevan and Tuamotuan pronunciation, which in some cases sounds more like tafu. The Hawaiian form is kapu, the Tongan tabu. Forms like tambu and tampu are not unknown, particularly in the mixed linguistic area or in the Polynesian periphery. Qodesh ["holy"] is, for the man of the Pentateuch, unthinkable without manifestation. Furthermore, it is a relation, and what is related to God becomes separated from other things, and separation implies taboo behavior. According to taboo concepts, man must behave in a certain way once the relationship has been established, whether or not he is part of the qodesh relationship. For it does not follow from either the behavioral or the doctrinal element of qodesh that (1) in the establishment of the relationship the incipient part must be God, or that (2) man must be the other part.
• Exodus 3:8: “Land flowing with milk and honey” is translated into Afar (Djibouti) as “a blessed land good for fields and cattle” and in a Chichewa (Malawi) translation idiomatically as “a land of what (type of food) can the child cry for?” (i.e. there is more than enough to eat).
• Exodus 3:9: “I have indeed heard (the cry of my people)” is translated into a Thai translation as “take heart and put into” meaning “take a deep interest in.”
• Exodus 3:14: “The Name of God and Salvation of Humanity” -- Japanese painting by Soichi Watanabe.
• Exodus 3:14: Complete verse in Bariai (Papua New Guinea): “And then God said to Moses, ‘I Am Just Like This. And so you will say to the Israel people, ‘God calls his own name like this: I Am Just Like This. And so he sent me, Moses, to come to you.’” In the English translation by Everett Fox: “God said to Moshe: I will be-there howsoever I will be-there. And he said: Thus shall you say to the Children of Israel: I-WILL-BE-THERE sends me to you.”

• Psalm 105:45: “Praise the LORD” is translated in a Chichewa (Malawi) translation with Tamandani Yehova. While in the English translation it’s not discernible whether a single or many people are addressed to praise God, the Chichewa translation is in the imperative plural form so it’s addressed to more than one.

Follow the links below to find a selection of message illustrations for the second reading

• Romans 12:9: Complete verse in Uma (Indonesia): “Really love your companions not [doing it] just out of custom. Discard evil behavior, hold-on-to good behavior.” In Yakan (Philippines): “Your love for your companions ought-to be from inside the liver. Hate everything which is bad and keep in your liver everything which is good.”
• Romans 12:10: “Outdo one another in showing honor” is translated as “always try to find out how the other person will come out better, and not yourselves” in Highland Totonac (Mexico) and as “be genuinely pleased if certain of your fellows should be more prominent than you yourself are” in Chicahuaxtla Triqui (Mexico).
• Romans 12:10: “Brotherly love” is translated in Waama (Benin) as “love each other as children of the same mother.” Like many languages, Waama has no generic term for “brother” and sister, just “older brother” or “younger brother.” At first, “love each other as children of the same father” seemed to fit but since the Waama live in a polygamous society, brothers of the same father with different mothers often don’t get along unlike maternal siblings.
• Romans 12:12: “Rejoice in hope” in English is translated into Cheke Holo (Solomon Isalnds) as “rejoice always in what God has promised you.”
• Romans 12:13: “Practice hospitality” is translated as “treat strangers kindly” in Yatzachi Zapotec (Mexico) or “give rest to people” in Mezquital Otomi (Mexico).
• Romans 12:16: “Humble, lowly” is translated in Kako (Cameroon) as “those who lower the heart.” Also many other translations.
• Romans 12:20: Complete verse in Tenango Otomi (Mexico): “Also it is written about the word God says ‘If you see that your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat. If you see that he is thirsty, give him water to drink. If you do to your enemy according to these works, then he will become ashamed, because there will come to his heart the evil he has done to you.'”
• Romans 12:20: “Thirsty” is translated in Kituba (Democratic Republic of Congo) as “hungry for water” and in Mairasi (Papua New Guinea) as “water pain.”
• Romans 12:21: Complete verse in Uma (Indonesia): “Don’t pay back the evil behavior of others with evil behavior too. If it’s like that, we end up being defeated because we have been defeated by evil. Rather, repay evil behavior with good behavior, in order that we defeat evil with goodness.”

Follow the links below to find a selection of message illustrations for the Gospel

• Matthew 16:23: “Get behind me” is rendered in Gumuz (Ethiopia) as “go away from my face.” “Get behind me, Satan” is translated in Highland Oaxaca Chontal (Mexico) as “Go away! Your word is like the word of Satan” and in Tzotzil (Mexico) as “Get away from me, you who are acting like Satan.”
• Matthew 16:23: “Satan” is transliterated in Kipsigis (Kenya) as “Setani.” This is interesting because it is not only a transliteration that approximates the Greek sound but it is also an existing Kipsigis word with the meaning of “ugly” and “sneaking.” In Morelos Nahuatl (Mexico) it is translated as “envious one” and in Tibetan as “chief devil.”
• Matthew 16:23: Complete verse in Tagbanwa (Philippines): “But Jesus faced him and said, ‘Go far from me. As long as you speak like Satanas, you are just in my way. What is in your mind/thinking is not the will of God, but on the contrary only that of man.'”
• Matthew 16:24: “Take up their cross” is translated in Galela (Indonesia) as “let go of each of their desires in their hearts” and in Chipaya (Bolovia) as “be ready to suffer, even die.”
• Matthew 16:24: “Deny oneself” is “quit what one wants” in Tabasco Chontal (Mexico), “undo one’s own way of thinking” in Highland Totonac (Mexico), “turn one’s back on oneself” in Javanese, or “shuffle out of one’s vision (=forget) everything which is one’s own” in Mairasi (Papua New Guinea). Also many others, including in a graphical display
• Matthew 16:24: “Come after me” or “follow me” is translated in Guhu-Samane (Papua New Guinea) as “will tie my back.” The idiom ‘whoever will tie my back’ pictures people who, as they travel in the dark night, tie a rope from the leader to the ones following so they will not lose the trail or fall from a cliff, and although not all see the original implications, it is graphic.
• Matthew 16:25: Complete verse in Tagbanwa (Philippines): “For the one who really values his life, it will indeed be lost to him. But the one who holds fast to me even though it may cause his life/breath to be severed, life which is far-from-ordinary really will be his.”
• Matthew 16:25: “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” is translated in a German New Testament translation as “He who sees himself as a goal will miss himself. But those who give themselves up for me can find themselves.”
• Matthew 16:26: Complete verse in Bariai (Papua New Guinea): “For if a man is receiving all the things on the earth, yet he misses out on good life after his death, how will all those things of his help him? For no one is able to buy his living later on.”
• Matthew 16:28: “Taste death” is translated in Guhu-Samane as “die” because the term suggests cannibalism to Papua New Guinea natives.
• Matthew 16:28: “Truly, truly, I tell you” is translated in a Russian translation “Trust me.”