Class Is In

Do you remember being in elementary school? How about sitting in class on the week before Christmas? Everyone running around not really listening to the teacher, the boys throughout the class launching spit balls at each other, the girls screeching when they got hit, the teacher getting the lesson ready in the morning, seemingly ignoring what 25 children are doing behind her. Then with authority and structure she would turn around and do...what? If you were a child anything like me, and every other 3rd, 4th or 5th grader, your thoughts were probably something like this "its the last day before Christmas break-I'm here to have fun, not learn or listen. I'm not going to see some of my friends for 2 weeks! I've got to get some good times in before the end of the day."  And often without warning, the teacher would walk calmly over to the door and shut the lights off! Oh the nerve!  (Allow me to take a break, if you don't know what it means to have the lights shut off in school....then you are missing an enriched part of your childhood life, a part when a light switch has the same affect on a child as wooden spoon!) Within seconds, literally seconds, everyone was quiet, heads on their desks, and no one was moving...oh you might have the occasional giggle from the class clowns but for the most part, quietness had overtaken the ruckus and noise. It wasn't amazing to me then, just part of life in class, but now looking back, that was an amazing trick performed by our teachers. And throughout time there have been a plethora of teacher trickery, if you never experienced it you have seen it on TV; a teach walking around the class with a ruler (very effective by the way), or my favorite from A Christmas Story "Class, class, its time to get started" and viola, like magic everyone was quiet.  So, for lack of a better term.....Class is in!

One of my favorite parts of school was English and vocabulary. I was a really good speller, one of only 2 in my family, me and my older brother, Chris, could spell and write like it was second nature. So every time I am in a class setting and I get to learn a new word...I am very excited! Well that's exactly what happened last night and I am going to teach you the words I learned - why? Well for no other reason than I was told that I needed to write again. Aren't you glad you read my blog!? :)

Words mean a lot in my life, I work with words in ways to get people to understand what they are doing in the legal system, how the law works and how they are required to obey that law intently. Words are my life line to explaining what the attorney details in legaleese (as we call it) and I get to translate. Words are very important, they are so important that I learned that in Hebrew every book is titled by the first words in the book. A great example is 'once upon a time' (I'm stealing this example from Beth Moore); if a fable had been written in Hebrew that started with this phrase that would be the book's name. Not a bad idea, not a great idea but not a bad idea.  Or at least I thought so until last night.  In Hebrew, the books of the Bible are named in Hebrew for the first words of each book; our translations (whether the NIV or King James) came from the Greek translation of the Bible from Hebrew.  Each Greek word, like Genesis, means what the book is about. Genesis means 'birth', 'genealogy', 'history of origin', 'source'; in Hebrew it was "in the beginning" or bereshit (bear-ah sheet).  Neat huh!? Excited yet!? I can tell all the way through the internet that you are very excited! Last night, in a weird course of events, I started a new class called Law of Love by Beth Moore, we are studying Deuteronomy. (I know hold your excitement down I'm typing as fast I my little fingers will let me!) The majority of the lesson last night was learning new words. My favorite - as of last night, of which I pummeled into my head - is Elah ha-Devarim (eh-lay ha-dev-a-rum), the Hebrew name for Deuteronomy. What doe these words mean? They translate "these are the words".  What a powerful phrase, I never thought they would be until I had to repeat this over and over last night in class, and 'these words' became powerful to me, meaningful to me, they meant something (although what-well I'm not to sure yet), but they mean something. Don't they mean something to you? I mean without knowing anything else 'these are the words' hold an introduction to someone's thoughts, someone's intent, someone's ideas...'these are the words'.

I know you probably stopped reading right after bereshit...in all honesty, I probably would too. But if you happened to stick with me, hold on to the thought that I am running through, I wonder if you think that Elah ha-Devarim might hold something for you too. Without knowing what I was getting myself into, I entered into a book that was old and unknown and probably a boring and tedious read to me. Especially after the cool stories and details of the New Testament, Deuteronomy seems, well.....uneventful. Even the name seems uneventful...who came up with Deuteronomy! What Greek was sitting around and said..."oh I got! Deuteronomy!" And yet, that is exactly where I landed. This is a long book, a book of Moses speaking to the Isrealites after they made it out of the wilderness and are about to cross the Jordan. It is Moses detailing their journey, their time in desert and giving their history to the new generation, the generation that didn't spend 40 yrs walking around Mt. Sinai. A story that the new generation would not know all the details of and he tells them this story in what I would call layman's terms...easy to understand, plain and simple (the Hebrew word be'er [bay-air]). A story to keep them reminded of a place that they do not need to return to, that they have been moved into the promise land, through a turmoil of  rebellion, and homelessness, and into a new life. In the words of Beth Moore, "Deuteronomy is the story of going through, being brought out of to be brought into."

I really have no idea what I am doing in this book of words, but for whatever reason, I feel compelled to read it. Read the words that start with 'these are the words'. Compelled to detail what I find, what I am meant to find.  So I embark on this weird and old journey, reading Deuteronomy, and lucky for you, I am going to write about those words that I hope hold meaning and in-sight. Hoping to find the words that I am meant to find, hidden somewhere in the text of Deuteronomy.

Elah ha-Devarim, these are the words, the words that tell how to get out and how to be free, the words that tell me that I am far from alone in this journey I am on and I think there is no point in what I am doing. These are the words, the words that I am going to trek through, the words that will hold some meaning that I have not found yet, words that in all hope and desire, give me freedom to be brought into whatever it is that has been waiting for me, whatever it is that has been planned and designed for me. Where are you in the journey out of the desert? I have no idea, I don't even really know where I am but I am 'breaking camp', going somewhere...for lack of imagination, I'm heading straight into the word!