Proverbs at Alice Well
A Finke River Mission teaching course was held in late September 2023 at Alice Well, 30 kilometres south of Titjikala and 150 kilometres south of Alice Springs. It was on the Book of Proverbs, and we read from the Contemporary English Version of the Bible and translated it on the go. The only exception was when we read from the Pitjantjatjara or Ngaanyatjarra or else read directly from Proverbs quotations in the New Testament (such as Romans 12:20). We had eight sessions of teaching, with each session covering selected parts of roughly four chapters.
We spent time at the beginning explaining what Proverbs is about – particularly, what the various terms mean – with several different words for wisdom and foolishness. It was explained that Proverbs was written specifically for young men but contains valuable teaching for young women and older people.
Finke River Mission had never taught Proverbs before. Proverbs do not occur very often in the set readings for each Sunday. So, it was all new to the listeners and seemed to make an impact, sometimes in unexpected ways. For example, ‘Your joy and your bitterness are your own; no one (except God) can share them with you’ (Proverbs 14:10) led to a lot of silent pondering among the listeners. We worked hard at unpacking the many metaphors throughout the book. Some were self-explanatory, such as, ‘A loud blessing early in the morning will be taken as a curse’ (Proverbs 27:14).
The church leaders seemed to agree that the book was written by a godly and astute observer and describer of human behaviour. One of them said, ‘I know people who are just like that!’ Other listeners were impressed by the way God was intimately concerned for the daily concerns of ordinary people in their everyday lives.
Please pray that the message of Proverbs will remain in the hearts of those who attended and that it can provide direction to Indigenous young people, who nowadays quite often find themselves in a seemingly trackless world.
Paul Treager is the FRM Support Worker for the Pintupi–Luritja language area.
