For the About the Story activity on the story of Sarah’s Laughter (Gen. 18:9-15) I decided to focus on the word “lord.” It was challenging to sort out and clarify the various uses of “lord” and issues related to translation. There is “the LORD” and then there is “my lord.” There is adonai, elohim, Yahweh, and Jehovah. And then there is that mouthful of a word, tetragrammaton. I ran short of time in class and almost skipped this segment, thinking it was too esoteric for these women, not all that confident I understood it myself, and figuring they wouldn’t be interested anyway.

But I had printed the tetragrammaton in large Hebrew script on card stock. I had lugged a Hebrew Bible along with all my other materials.  I didn’t want to waste all that effort! So I attempted a quick oral explanation, handed out About the Story, displayed the Hebrew Bible, and showed the graphic of the tetragrammaton.

To my surprise the women were very interested. A older woman who clearly struggled with English literacy was fascinated and copied the tetragrammaton onto her story paper. I never cease to be amazed at the things that happen in Circle of the Word.