By Maritza Brunt
Jambo! Bonjour! Konnichiwa! We’re saying hello in different languages.
What language do you speak? If you’re listening to this story, you are hearing it in English. Some of you can speak other languages, like Mandarin, or Spanish, or maybe even Arabic!
Well, this story is about a group of people who could all speak only one language—but it wasn’t a good thing! Let’s find out why…
After the big flood that covered the whole earth, God told everyone on board to spread out all over the world. The animals got off the ark and went to find new homes, in the mountains, the lakes, the forests and the deserts. Noah and his family got off the ark too, and as the years went by, the family grew and grew until there were lots of people living on the earth once again.
But they didn’t adventure across the earth. They all stayed together. This wasn’t what God had told them to do.
One day, this big group of people decided to find a new home. They moved all their things into a big desert area, and made lots of bricks to use for homes.
But then, someone had an idea.
“Hey, everyone!” said a person. “Why don’t we build a city with a tower?”
The people liked this.
“But not just any tower,” said someone else. “The tallest tower in the world! Let’s make it so tall that it reaches all the way up to heaven! It will stand forever, and then everybody on earth will know that WE built it!”
“What a good idea!” everyone agreed. They got to work right away, excited that they would forever be remembered as the people who built the tallest tower in the world.
They knew that building this tower would make them famous! Children stood by and watched in awe as each brick was carefully placed, and the tower began to grow higher and higher.
But someone else was watching, too.
Up in heaven, God could see what the people were doing. He came down to earth to have a closer look over the city and the building process.
Now, remember what God told everyone on the ark? He told them to go and spread across the earth. The animals obeyed what God told them to do! But the big group of people didn’t listen. Because they wanted to be powerful and famous, they chose to disobey what God had told them to do.
God was sad that the people didn’t listen to Him. But He had a plan!
“Excuse me, friend,” called a young man who was working on the tower. “Can you pass me a brick?”
The old man he had spoken to stared at him blankly.
“A brick!” said the young man, pointing at the stack of bricks on the ground.
The old man said something back to him—but the young man couldn’t understand a word he was saying! As the young man looked down, he could see the building work had completely stopped. Groups of people were standing around looking very confused and upset, and the noise was getting louder and louder.
What is going on? wondered the young man as he scurried down his ladder. He grabbed the arm of a woman passing by.
“That old man there didn’t understand me, and I didn’t understand him! Do you know what is happening?” he asked her.
The lady, who had been shaking her head the entire time the man was speaking, responded in a high pitched voice, but the words coming out of her mouth didn’t make any sense to him, either!
Eventually, the young man found a few people who understood him and who he could also understand. So did the lady, and so did the old man. This was God’s plan—to mix up their words so that they wouldn’t understand each other. God created new languages so the people would learn to obey him and follow Him instead of doing their own thing.
Because the people couldn’t understand each other, the work on the tower stopped, and God scattered them in their different language groups all over the world.
And that’s why today we have so many different languages all around the world! The people that tried to build the tower quickly learned that when we leave God out of our plans, our plans will fail. From that point on, they made sure they obeyed what God told them to do.
PICTURE CREDIT –Sweet Publishing Free Bible Images
