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!

You Are More

Don't you think it's funny when you look back at something that you've experienced and realize that what you thought you had experienced is different than what you actually experienced? I mean in the real world we expect to experience something immediately the way we perceive it with no change to our intent perception. Then, more often then not, the perception and experience is changed dramatically - only most of the time when we are going through the experience we believe that it is happening just as we expect; it is only after the experience is completed that we start to see it differently than we had perceived. That happened this week to me, almost four years ago to the day Lee and I experienced a welcome at a church we were blackmailed to attend (yes blackmailed, no matter what the dear friend who orchestrated this event calls it). When we first walked through the doors at Grace Church in December 2008, there stood my dear friend arms raised, smile on face and singing "hallelujah".  In that experience I only saw her standing there, or at least that was the experience that I perceived. But standing just inside the double doors were two people that perceived something amazing when they saw us, one of which was no more than 4 foot 11 inches in height, that would be a good day, the other no much taller, both - as I recall - what I would say very old. Both easily in their 80s, and both smiling (although I really don't remember that part, I don't remember seeing a day when either of them without a smile - I'm guessing that was true that day too). I don't remember directly if we met these 2 people that day, although I'm almost positive that we did, and that meeting changed, in retrospect, changed 2 lives.

That amazing 4'11" woman, not more than a lovely grandmother looking lady, contained within her a gift that was more than just slightly amazing. And everywhere I remember seeing her stood closely by her husband, giving soft encouragement and support to his bride and, at least in my sight, always smiling and concerned about the direction she was going. I have on many occasions and almost every Sunday morning said good morning to this couple, well that is if they were not greeting new comers into the church, how did they know they people they were greeting new comers, I have no idea.  Lee would say in a sea of 800 people coming in and going out of the front doors, this amazing woman could pick out those who had never been through those doors before. That's how she changed our 2 lives too. After only about 6 weeks, we were walking back through those doors and she immediately stopped us and asked us to become greeters on Sunday morning. At that time, I could only imagine what was going through Lee's mind, not the social butterfly, I'm sure he felt obligated to assist and grant this gracious lady her request. At least that is what I perceived, that is not what actually occurred. All 4'11" of this small framed, smiling woman knew exactly who needed to receive a gift and by far it was not her.  In all the times that she approached people, she knew exactly where their service for God would raise, don't ask me how, I have no idea, but without a doubt she knew that Lee and I were to start at the doors of the church (Lee would be a greeter for much longer - but it was the doors that first transformed me to go later to children's church). She  knew, when we first walked through those double doors, that we were more than 2 unsaved people fulfilling a blackmail order.

I am sure that she is more than what I describe in the few sentences above and although I never took her small group class Titus II, I read this - this morning:  Titus 2:1-5 "You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. Likewise,  teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers...but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God." Although her group, Titus II was to train up women, in all of her body, she trained men and women every day, in every experience, whether they knew it or not.  This set of scripture, is an embodiment of Loretta Kauffman, a small framed smiling woman who saw more than what we were in every moment that we met her through the front doors of the church. And in every experience of meeting her  smiling face, she was training me up, an experience that I never saw in those moments, never realized was happening, and was not - in those moments - what I perceived. Rather, each meeting, greeting, hand holding, hug, smile or concerned word was an experience to train me up....for what I have no idea but training up nonetheless.

I can only hope that everyday of my life, I can be that Titus II woman, the Titus II woman that Loretta saw when she met me every day that I met her at the church doors. I hope that with every person I meet ,after I walk through the double doors at the church, the single door at work, the sliding doors at the store, and every door that I open, I can bring the experience that I am meant to bring to the person or persons whom I meet. I can only hope that with every meeting I have, I can bring an experience that, at that moment is perceived as something other than what it truly is, an experience that in retrospect, is something more than originally perceived, no matter how long it takes for that realization to take affect. I will miss seeing her smiling face on Sunday morning or the occasional weekday at the church, I will miss her impromptu training sessions, and the way she knew more about me than even I know today. 

I know that I do not have a gift like Loretta but I know that somewhere in her life she saw a gift in Lee and I.  And from the first moments we walked through the doors, she had a plan to change our lives, to be more than we were, and she succeeded in training us up, slowly and without our knowledge she did just that.  I will miss seeing her smiling face, and her words of concern and direction. I can only thank Loretta, the Titus II woman that I've known for 4 years, for the gift she brought to me, one I didn't perceive during the time we spent together, she showed me Christ every time I met her. I hope with all my heart that one day I too will be a Titus II woman, a woman not to unlike Loretta, and a woman who reflects Christ every day. 

Train up the younger men and women, to be self-controlled, to love their spouses, to be kind, and to love God, in faith and endurance.