Go Big or Go Home

     It's amazing how the Holy Spirit can work when you listen to it.  I'll try to make this story short.  When I decided to be a Middle Eastern Studies major and go to Jerusalem for a year, it was because I had heard my adviser, Dr. Crutchfield, read part of the Shema in Hebrew in our Old Testament Survey class.  There was something about listening to and speaking the words of the Bible in Hebrew that touched my heart in a way that I had never encountered before.  Well, through talking to previous friends of mine that had been to JUC and talking to Crutch (who advised me not to take Hebrew here because he had heard that the teacher was just okay), I decided to take Arabic.  But the longer I'm here, the more I realize that I have such a strong desire to be able to read the Bible in Hebrew.  I spend all my time in the Jewish quarter.  And, I'm sorry, but I could care less about modern politics.  I mean... that may be a bit harsh.  I do care.  But not like some people here.  You can tell that the people that want to work with the Palestinian/Israeli conflict truly feel a calling for it.  Where as I just want to study my Bible and understand God better in all of it's original context.  I like the Arabic class, a lot, but I never plan on using it.  So it hit me today, in my Arabic class, why am I not taking Hebrew?  And when I asked myself that question, I felt so heart-strikingly guilty that it was almost more than I could handle.  All of this to say, that I don't often listen to the Holy Spirit very well.  And it feels a little irrational to drop Arabic and jump into Hebrew a week and a half behind.  But I'm a military kid, and I know I've had to start classes mid-semester before.  There are also tutors for Hebrew.  So with a little help from some other students and God, I think I'm gonna do it.  Like I always so, "Go big or go home!" Right?