Colors

Written by Taylor Lahey

Hello all the readers out there! We have done another long day in Israel, filled with the normal day-to-day scrambling to find the “porcelain,” to walking in the same places that Jesus walked. Its casual.

Today we started out waking up on the Sea of Galilee, reflecting on the jammed pack 3 days (feels more like years) we have spent in Israel so far. We drove a short distance to Capernaum, up the coast to where Jesus had moved the headquarters of his ministry for a time. We then moved to Qatzrin, a site where we got to learn about the normal day-to-day life of a Jew in the first century, from exploring a house they would have lived in to learning about the synagogue and how they educate the next generation with the Scriptures. We got to read the Sermon on the Mount on the ACTUAL "Mount" where it was spoken (that still hasn’t quite sunk in). We ended the day with a final lesson on the shores of Galilee.

The best way to describe today is summarized in just one word: COLORS. But since it’s a blog I’ll elaborate. Everyone who has gone to Israel had told me that it is like “coloring in the pages of the Bible.” I didn’t really understand that until today. It first hit me as we woke up this morning and started driving - it was GREEN everywhere. We've spent the last couple days hiking through the wilderness and hanging around the Dead Sea, so now wake up in a place that was covered in green is a huge contrast. Every thing that the eye could see was green. This green just reminds me of the blessing that Christ has showed to his people in a land surrounded by deserts. How good He is!

Next, there was the YELLOW on the Sermon on the Mount. The lilies that have completely covered the side of the hill were a beautiful yellow. How they danced and swayed with the wind as I read one of the most famous sermons of Jesus’s ministry will be a sight I never forget. They reminded me of the peace that comes from being with Christ. The “lilies of the field neither toil nor spin, yet even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these,” and God uses them to clothe the very fields we were sitting on. Why then should I be anxious about today or the next? We have a Lord that provides abundantly and beautifully.

And finally there was the RED of the text. Like most kids, I got one of those red-letter bibles that were meant to highlight anytime that Jesus was speaking in the Bible. It was great and very helpful, but it has nothing on reading the very words that Jesus spoke in the very spot he spoke them. There are no words that can explain the feeling of being able to read John 6:17-59 out loud in the very spot that they were spoken. Reading about how Jesus is the “very bread of life” that has come down to heaven and is the source of “eternal life” in the spot that it happen - makes the text burn brighter in my mind than the red highlighting in my Bible ever will.

Again, we are so appreciative of all of you out there keeping up with and praying for us here. I cannot express enough the gratitude we have for everyone's support. We now get to relax and reflect on all that we have seen today and prepare for another big and colorful day tomorrow.

Thanks for reading!
Taylor Lahey

P.S.
Don’t worry mom, I haven’t lost anything (yet)!