There were many lessons on sheep over the course of this past year, so in seeing another sheep lesson... You start to think, "Everything is running together." Specifically, this lesson for the kids centers around the story of the lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7). In summary, Jesus taught the audience about a shepherd and his one hundred sheep. If one goes missing, doesn't that shepherd go find it? If a shepherd finds a lost sheep, doesn't he rejoice over finding his sheep? If a sinner repents, if God finds the bad guys (the lost), doesn't heaven rejoice in a New Believer? Why yes!
So, after that updated, a string of conversation followed, to which a friend suggested I teach the kids in Chinese and I immediately thought of this Chinese character:
義
This is the Chinese character for "righteous" or "righteousness". In a simple Chinese explanation, it is just being morally good, or right. Many years ago, when I was in college, I was introduced to a book The Discovery of Genesis: How the Truths of Genesis Were Found Hidden in the Chinese Language. In the book, the author theorizes that after the Tower of Babel, and after God has spread the people to different countries, confusing their language, each language and culture has some parts or story about God, Creation and of course, Jesus. For the Chinese language, some of the Chinese character can be broken down to many little characters that tells a story, and there are a handful of characters that if you break it apart, you start to see these root "words" (characters) that make up the bigger picture. A lot of the bigger picture points to the original stories or even prophesies of the Bible. To be honest, after reading bits and pieces of the book, as well as one or two chapters in its entirety, the author doesn't really explain his theories too well. But the overall idea is very plausible and I think I can take his ideas and run with the explanation as I will describe the word "righteousness" in the following.
With this particular character, righteousness (義), it is made up of two Chinese characters, 羊 (sheep), and 我 (me), and where the "sheep" is above "me". And within the character, 我 (me), there are yet two other characters, 手 (hand) and 戈 (blade), side-by-side. From the book Discovery of Genesis, the author explains that this character might demonstrate our general act of worship in order to become right with God (after the first few pages of Chapter 8 of the book, he goes on a bunny trail...). I believe that the hand holds the blade, which describes "me", who sacrifice a lamb or sheep for worshipping of God. You see this act of worship a lot in the Old Testament. Many of the Jews throughout the OT and even today perform sacrifices of animals as a form of worship.
But it's interesting to note the the character "sheep" is above "me" in the word righteousness. Although this may mean of early days of people sacrificing sheep to God, it's also a hidden prophesy that in the Gospels, eventually our sins will sacrifice the perfect Lamb of God, who is already righteous. God is over me, my sins! No more do we have to sacrifice our animals for worship; God has already done it! Why? Because God is righteous and just.
Interestingly enough, my own name, 陳淑儀 (Chan Shuk Yee), the last character is a form of the character righteousness. When a "stick person" is added on the left side, it gives that character the ability to be used in a name. You often see this in the Chinese language, when a character is "humanized" so that it can be used in given names.
There are many characters in the Chinese language that follows this story-telling. Maybe to give you a homework, here is the character for "boat":
船
The first character of the right means "vessel", the one that looks like this 八 is eight and the one that looks like this 口 is mouth. Think Genesis and floods. :)
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