Hebrew for fun and profit...

So I am getting the opportunity to learn Hebrew. As part of my education, I will (by choice) be taking both Hebrew and Greek so I can read the Bible in the “original” languages. Hebrew is wild – I got my Old Testament in the mail the other day, promptly opened it up to find that you start at the back, read right to left, and that the script is freakishly small. Thus begins my experience of language acquisition as an adult. We are learning it like little kids do – associating words with pictures, hearing it spoken to us, and opening up the pathways to our brains to retain it rather than memorize and dump later. Funny thing…I’ve learned about 60 words in Hebrew based on pictures. My favorite thus far has been ‘yaad’, which is the biblical Hebraic word for hand. I was talking to Kari about it one evening, and Emy runs by. Then she stops, out of the blue, and holds up her hand. Huge smile, and shouts “YAAD!!!” and runs on. Poor old dad has to review ump-teen times to remember, the 2 yr old gets it after hearing me say it about 4 times. How cool is that?

It is easy when they are young – their brains haven’t been corrupted, they are still sponges that absorb the world and the Word and are fertile places to plant seeds. That is why our calling is SO important – we have the chance to plant some seeds in soil that hasn’t been baked too hard by the troubles and yuck of the world. I hope that a 2 yr old learning Hebrew will remind us that they are listening, and that stuff does sink in even when we are not sure it is…