Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Job

Last night I taught a VLT class on Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Job.

There was a lot of energy in the room, spiced up with a little bit of spring fever, and some classic good humored attempts to fool the substitute teacher. But I did find myself grateful for some totally unrelated experiences which were suddenly standing me in good stead.

I had a flashback to an evening about 18 years ago, when I was babysitting the children of the pastor, and they were testing my limits by making up stories of how late they could go to bed. Nope, I didn't fall for it 18 years ago, and I didn't fall for the '45 minute break, and end at 9pm' ploy last night. Sorry guys.

Then I was reminded of the nursing home. After dealing with sleepers and the senile, a little bit of class rowdyness is totally not a problem for me. I've been heckled by a 90 year old demented woman in a wheelchair, so a little bit of whispering (and even some uncontrollable giggling) isn't a big deal.

And then we got to the topic at hand: Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Job. Normally you would think this would be rather heavy, but there were moments of levity. The class performed a skit based on the book of Job. Their natural sense of drama brought a whole new flavor to the book. Satan hid in the closet. Job's friends spoke with Hebrew, Yiddish, and Brooklyn accents (or something like that). Job protested at being unfairly accused.

I bet that when Steve Robbins gave us the assignment to write one-sentence summaries of the paragraphs in the book of Ephesians, he didn't realize what would happen if I tried the same exercise on the book of Job. Except it sort of turned out about a sentence per chapter, and inadvertently I ended up writing a skit. Of course, it loses all the grandeur of "where were you when I created the heavens and the earth", but gains in pungency. But it was really the accents that carried it. Thanks guys!