Yes I should really be studying for my first exam in Turkish. For those who are in the know, it is the first half of A1. I am reliably informed that no one ever fails an exam at our language school; especially says my young Tajik friend, not A1. But, as I said to her, if I fail then, it will be even worse. I can hear the teachers saying to future generations of nervous students that no one ever fails, but 'there was this old English lady once and somehow she managed to fail A1 part 1'. Such are my confidence levels with regard to learning Turkish at the moment!!
It has made me reflect on the fact that it is possible to learn the wrong thing. I might learn vocab that doesn't come up and omit to learn vocab that does. A young friend from Rushden posted about how her baby daughter has taught her that we can't stop learning...its kind of a God-given attribute. The psalmist says that the heavens declare the glory of God, but is it the glory of God that I learn from the heavens? My oldest, dearest friend has had a bereavement this week that I am overwhelmed by and I know she is devasted.....what does it teach me about the God I love and serve? Everything teaches us, our own stories and the stories of others. My husband and I are working hard to listen to the stories of others but we need to learn the right things from them and to allow God to speak to us through these stories so that our responses are appropriate and kind. The Bible is full of stories....again do we learn the right things from them? Bono, U2 frontman, says that he used to be disturbed by the fact that the Bible tells the stories of deceivers and adulterers and murderers, now he is just relieved. The Bible doesn't gloss over the sins of the people in it or the tragedies and joys that happen to them. Not all the stories have happy endings even. So as I ask myself what I should learn from the pages of grammar that I have copied from the board, I need also to ask what I should be learning about God and about the lovely people that we are meeting and what I need to learn about this culture to be a blessing in it. I must also always keep in mind that just as there will be more to learn in Turkish, that this isn't the end of any of our stories or indeed the last chapter in any of the peoples' stories that we are listening to.
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