Home Resources Prayer World Day of Prayer for Bible Translation 2023 Meditations 2023

Meditations 2023

World Day of Prayer for Bible Translation

11 November 2023

Fruit on display in a market in Lima, Peru. Photo: Marc Ewell

God of Abundance

Throughout the whole of Scripture, we see many examples of God’s lavish provision for his children, as a nation as well as for individuals and small groups. In Exodus 16 we see God provide food for the Israelites in the wilderness in the form manna and quail. Manna was given so plentifully and consistently that the Israelites ate it for 40 years until they entered the promised land. In John 21 we read how the Lord Jesus provided for his disciples. They had been fishing all night and had caught nothing. Imagine how tired and frustrated they felt. Just as they were at the point of giving up, they saw Jesus calling to them from the beach. He told them to throw their nets over the right side of the boat. As soon as the disciples obeyed, the nets filled up with fish, so much so that they could not haul the fish on board but had to drag the nets behind the boat back to shore.

As we gather this year to mark the World Day of Prayer for Bible translation, let's take this opportunity to celebrate what God has done.

Take time to share stories of how God has provided, and shown his abundance to you—personally and organisationally. Let’s not forget the many ways God gives us good things.
Celebrate God’s love and generosity as you worship.

Stories of God’s abundance

Giving Back to God - Malaysia
A Cycle of Giving - Thailand
Encouraged by Generosity - UK
Generosity Brings Joy - Cameroon
Generosity of God - Papua New Guinea
Generosity to the Glory of God - Ghana
God's Abundant Provision - West Africa
Stories of Generosity - Americas
Stories of God's Abundance - Malaysia

Our thirst

Have you noticed that many of us are weary, discouraged, distracted and struggling? Do we slow down long enough to be satisfied by all that God has for us? Are you thirsty for more of God’s presence and righteousness? Even when we spend time in prayer, are we distracted? Are our minds on other things? God promises to fill that deep need in our hearts, that need that only he can satisfy:

Matthew 5:6 AMP

“Blessed [joyful, nourished by God’s goodness] are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness [those who actively seek right standing with God], for they will be [completely] satisfied.

Isaiah 55:1-2 NIV

‘Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;

and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.

Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labour on what does not satisfy?

Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare.

In the video, we consider one metaphor for God’s abundance—a banquet. Different cultures feast in different ways, but nearly every culture makes feasting part of celebration. Often there are specific foods reserved for feasting and they have special significance or meaning. We can expect, therefore, the richest of fare from the God of the universe.

Contrast this with a junk-food meal. In the moment that we eat it, it might taste good. It’s not usually costly and we can eat it on the run. But very quickly we only crave more, even though it makes us feel dissatisfied and sluggish. In the short term, the damage junk food does is slight, but if we continue to eat too much of it we could gain weight, we will probably lack energy and we will potentially start having health problems. In the same way, the distractions of this world do not satisfy us at a deep, soul level. God invites us to come to him and be satisfied rather than look to the many distractions of this world to satisfy us. It may take discipline, but in his presence, especially when we linger, we encounter his love, mercy, forgiveness, goodness and kindness. As we spend unhurried time with him, our souls are restored, and we are strengthened to continue following and serving him.

Ways to linger

Consider including some of the following in your World Day of Prayer event:

Worship
Silent reflection
Lectio Divina
Biblical reflection
Confession

Stories of what Alliance Organisations are doing to encounter God’s abundance

Rethinking Sabbath
Abundance in Community - Europe

Responding to God’s abundant generosity to us

In John 21, Jesus provided abundantly for the disciples, but then invited them to contribute from what he had given plentifully to the meal they would all enjoy. Jesus also demonstrated how we can participate in his generosity in the story of feeding the 5,000 in John 6. In this story, even though Jesus and the disciples had tried to retreat to a quiet spot to rest, thousands of people sought Jesus out. He immediately demonstrated his concern for them by asking his disciple Philip how they would feed so many. Philip’s response was, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!” I am sure that this sentiment resonates with many of us as we are so often faced with enormous needs and few resources. It’s easy to feel that there is nothing we can do. Yet because one “insignificant” boy was willing to share what he had, Jesus performed an amazing miracle. What will God do if we share the limited money, time, expertise, wisdom or understanding that we have? We may even find like this small boy that more is left over at the end than we started with!

Respond with generosity:

Allocate time to pray for needs within Bible translation movements. You could use Streams of Prayer, contact other Alliance organisations to ask them what needs they have, check out social media feeds, etc.
Read stories of Alliance organisations showing generosity and through that encountering God’s abundance.
Invite partners to join you to spend the day with God. Ask them how you can serve them generously.

You may want to also prayerfully consider these questions and allow God to speak to your particular situation:

Where have you seen a scarcity mindset and how is this impacting the Bible translation movement?
What changes or habits can we introduce to better experience and share God’s abundance?
Has our work taken precedence over our relationship with God? Are we too busy?

World Day of Prayer 2023

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Special Report - May 2025

‘We’ve come very far, very fast’

A tech observer outlines what AI will mean soon for workplaces and ministry

Tech pioneer: Christians ‘have to show up’ for AI

Silicon Valley pioneer Pat Gelsinger was CEO of Intel Corporation until December 2024. Quickly realising his career in technology was not finished, he joined the faith/tech platform Gloo in early 2025 as the executive chair and head of technology. He is also a general partner at the venture capital firm Playground Global. Gelsinger was instrumental in the development of cloud computing, Wi-Fi, USB and many other everyday technologies. He estimates his work has touched 60 to 70 percent of humanity. Here are highlights of his keynote talk at the 2025 Missional AI Summit. You can watch his entire talk here. Pat Gelsinger (left) is interviewed onstage by Steele Billings. Both are with Gloo. Watch the full interview here. Is technology good or bad? Technology is neither good nor bad. It’s neutral. It can be used for good. It can be used for bad. … If you think back to the Roman roads, why did Christ come when he came? I’ll argue the Pax Romana and the Roman roads. … The greatest technology of the day was the Roman road system. It was used so the Word could go out. Historical example I will argue Martin Luther was the most significant figure of the last thousand years. And what did he do? He used the greatest piece of technology available at the day, the Gutenberg printing press. He created Bibles. … He broke, essentially, the monopoly on the Bible translations …. He ushered in education. He created the systems that led to the Renaissance. That’s a little punk monk who only wanted to get an audience with the pope because he thought he had a few theological errors. I’ll argue (Luther was) the most significant figure of the last thousand years, using technology to improve the lives of every human that he touched at the time. How today compares to the dawn of the internet AI is more important. AI will be more significant. AI will be more dramatic. … This is now incredibly useful, and we’re going to see AI become just like the internet, where every single interaction will be infused with AI capabilities. In the 75-year-or-so history of computing, we humans have been adapting to the computer. … With AI, computers adapt to us. We talk to them. They hear us. They see us for the first time. And now they are becoming a user interface that fits with humanity. And for this and so many other reasons that every technology has been building on the prior technology, AI will unquestionably be the biggest of these waves, more impactful even than the internet was. On the need for AI development to be open-source It is so critical because we’re embedding knowledge, embedding values, embedding understanding into those underlying models, large language models and every aspect that happens. It must be open, and this is part of what I think is critical about us being together here today. We need to be creating trusted, open, useful AI that we can build humanity on. On the need for Christians to help build AI systems We have to show up as the faith community to be influencing those outcomes, because remember what happened in the social media. We didn’t show up, and look at what we got. So are we going to miss this opportunity for something that’s far more important than social networking with AI? Where it truly in the models embeds every aspect of human history and values into it? We have to show up, team. What we do with large language models is far more important because truly we are choosing how we embody knowledge of all time into those underlying models. They need to be open. They need to be trusted. What Christians must bring to the process If we’re going to show up to influence AI broadly, we have to show up with good engineering, good data, good understanding, good frameworks. How do you measure things like ‘Is that leading to better character? Is that leading to better relationships? Is that creating better vocational outcomes? Is that a valid view of a spiritual perspective?’ We need good underlying data associated with each one of these. And for that we’re actively involved. We’re driving to create that underlying data set. Because we need to show up with good data if we’re going to influence how AI is created. How should this work? For the AI systems we need to create good benchmarks. If I ask about God, does it give me a good answer or not? If I ask about relationships with my children, does it give me good answers? We need to create the corpus of data to give good answers to those questions. And, armed with that good data, we need to show up to influence the total landscape of AI. We want to benchmark OpenAI. We’re going to benchmark Gemini. We’re going to benchmark Claude. We’re going to benchmark Copilot. This is what we’re going to do at Gloo, but we want to be part of a broader community in that discussion so that we’re influential in creating flourishing AI. Technology is a force for good. AI that truly embeds the values that we care about, that we want to honour, that we want to be representing into the future and benchmarking across all of them. Oh his role with Gloo We are going to change the landscape of the faith community and its role in shaping this most critical technology, AI, for faith and flourishing. That’s what we’re going to do at Gloo and we need all of your help and partnership to do so because if we don’t hang together, we’re not going to influence the outcome, right? ‘Here am I, Lord’ I don’t think I’m done. … You and I both need to come to the same position like Isaiah did. Here am I, Lord. Send me. Send me. Send us. That we can be shaping technology as a force for good. That we could grab this moment in time. This is the greatest time to live in human history. We’re going to solve diseases. We’re going to improve lives. We’re going to educate every person in poverty. We are going to solve climate issues. We are going to be using these technologies to improve the lives of every human on the planet. We are going to shape technology as a force for good. Here am I, Lord. Send me. ••• Story: Jim Killam, Wycliffe Global Alliance Translated with ChatGPT. How was the translation accuracy? Let us know at info@wycliffe.net. Alliance organisations are welcome to download and use images from this series.