At one point in my life, I was sailing the seas of cheese. Now I am drowning in a sea of Spanish. Today I began auditing two Spanish classes at ACU, both of which are taught by our team’s personal tutor, Señora Walker. I am auditing Intermediate Spanish and Survey of Latin American Literature; the first is taught in Spanish and English, the second purely in Spanish (today, I caught about 10% of what she said). Please pray for my language acquisition ability, my patience, and my sanity.
Women in the Old Testament
This past week I have been auditing the ACU graduate school course with the above title. It seems that I just can’t get enough of school-inflicted torture, so I keep taking more classes. Yet, this past week has been anything but torture; in fact, I might even label the week joyous. Dr. Glenn Pemberton proved to be an excellent professor, leading the class through difficult biblical passages, discussions, and topics. My classmates provided helpful insights and questions, in addition to being kind and humorous.But the best part of the class was the material. For the entire week, from 8 am to 5 pm (with several breaks, of course), we examined obscure Old Testament passages that are often overlooked and nearly always oversimplified. These passages were ones that included women as one or more of the main characters in the story. It was fascinating to examine the numerous dimensions that affected, both positively and negatively, the daily existence of women in ancient Israel: the roles they played in religion, their importance in the family and community, their social oppression, their abilities, their short-comings, and the way God worked both through and sometimes in spite of these dimensions.And the most surprising outcome of the week: my greater appreciation of the Song of Songs as an amazing biblical text that offers hope and a vision for the future (but not in the way that one might expect). Ask me about it sometime.
