Bent but not broken

Shalom to all our family back home! Halie here. I typically don’t write the blogs, but today was close to my heart, so here goes nothin’. Last night we arrived at our hotel in Jerusalem (which may or may not have been a dream, we still can’t decide) and awoke this morning ready for our first full day here in the House of the Lord!

We were supposed to visit the Temple Mount first thing this morning, but our wonderful driver, Mayir, said that the line outside of the Temple Mount was the longest he had ever seen in all his years doing tours, and so we were presented with an opportunity to practice being  flexible as the tour guides and our staff decided it would be best not to visit the Temple Mount on our tour this year. We were all a little bent but certainly not broken as we made our way to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum here in Israel for our actual first stop of the day.

We as a class had the opportunity to visit the Holocaust Museum in LA during our trip there in March, and so this was our second time learning about the Holocaust all together. I’m not completely sure why, but literally every time I have ever so much as pondered a thought about the Holocaust, my heart becomes overwhelmed with a great sorrow and a passionate fury to match. Today was no different, other than the fact that this time we were in the land of the very people whose not-so-distant ancestors had been the victims or survivors of the Holocaust. We saw the same blood-churning images, heard the same heart-wrenching stories, cried the same salty tears over the injustice and inhumanity of it all, but one thing that felt different  this time was something our tour guide Ronan said: “We need to remember. We need to remember, yes. But then we need to go on and continue with our lives.” I think that really hit me because I have a tendency to get stuck in the sadness of it all, stuck in the kind of remembering that makes me curl up in a ball and cry for those millions of murdered innocents, but Ronan’s comment made me rethink that. I want to do the kind of remembering that moves me to action, to stop injustices as I see them happen in our world here and now, the kind of remembering that inspires me to do something with my life that the 1.5 million children murdered in the Holocaust never got the chance to do, and really that’s the kind of people Joshua has been transforming us into this year: those who will ACT JUSTLY, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God, like our class verse Micah 6:8 says.

Sorry for the long schpeel about the Holocaust Museum (that was the big part of my day if you couldn’t tell) but, after the museum we traveled to David’s city and got to walk through Hezekiah’s tunnel which is this super tiny, 500 yard long tunnel filled with water up to your knees that they used to transport water into the city in ancient times. We had the privilege of walking through it all together with our flashlights and water shoes and other such nerdy get-up. It was another one of those “What is our life right now?!” moments like we’ve had a bajillion times already on this trip. Although the long, dark, water-filled, potentially claustrophobia-inducing tunnel felt like it was never going to end, we finally saw the light and ended up sitting on some steps waiting for everyone to get through. Those steps quickly transformed from just some steps, to something awesome as we learned that they were the steps leading down to the pool of Siloam, where Jesus, in John 9, rubbed mud in a blind man’s eyes and told him to wash it off to gain his sight.

We were whisked away once more to a place just outside the Temple Mount, the Southern steps, where Rich told us he thought the Pentecost occurred, and where Jenna shared with us to Remember and don’t forget this trip. Remember and don’t forget this year.  Remember and don’t forget how faithful God has always been in all of our lives. Many of us left that teaching teary-eyed thinking of how close we are coming to the end of our year… and speaking of the end of the year, tonight we all are going to go see the premiere of a movie about surfing in Israel! It’ll be our first time seeing a movie in theaters all year long since signing the covenant, and we all get to do it together!

Well there’s the not-so-brief synopsis of day 8! Remember, don’t forget, that God is faithful and holds our futures in His hands. Remember, don’t forget, to live your life to the fullest abundance that Jesus intended to give us when He died and rose again. Shalom, goodbye and peace.

1 day ago.