An unlikely candidate

25 May 2015 - Remembering our brave service men and women this Memorial Day, thank you for your sacrifice.

Today was day 2 in Israel, but our first full day of touring The Holy Land. Jet lag is the pits! We are doing a lot of hiking over some difficult terrain, but at every destination we are learning things and seeing the places we have read about in the Bible for so many years.

Our first stop today was in Yad Vashem, where we toured a biblical village and learned about agriculture from that time period. Our guide, Yeshuda (I apologize, but am unsure of the spelling of his name) is incredibly knowledgeable and he is really helping us to integrate all these sites with the information from Bible passages. In the village, we saw a wine press and learned how wine was made in the old days. Terry Feix brought it to touch our own hearts by explaining the amount of hard work and time and dedication it took just to prepare the land for growing grapes. If prepared properly and well tended, good fruit was the result. God is working like that in the lives of His people, preparing fertile soil and giving us all we need to spread His truth and bear fruit. We also saw an olive press and learned about the painstaking process of making oil. We saw a threshing floor and learned those were built in the most windy places on the hillside, so that the chaff could be removed more easily from the wheat. We saw burial caves and learned about some of the burial customs of the time.

Our next stop was at Beth Shemesh where we learned about the water system being used at the time. From this Tel (hill) we could see where Sampson lived in Zoor, which was not at all far from Delilah's town of Timnah. We talked about how Sampson gradually shed his morality and values through repeated exposure to un-Godly behavior. The parallel was drawn to present times, as we are constantly exposed to things which are not compatible with Christian life, but over time, these things tend to become the new normal, and are no longer offensive.

We made a brief pit stop (where I finally found a Diet Coke - Hallelujah!) and then on to the next site at Azekah. We are traveling in a large charter bus, and our driver is really good at maneuvering that thing in some very tight spaces! At Azekah, we climbed another Tel and had a great panoramic view of the area, while learning about young David, armed only with his sling and stones and his faith. Terry gave a wonderful talk about how David was dressed in Saul's armor, but said he couldn't fight like that, and faced the giant with his simple tools. And of course he was victorious because it was not a shepherd boy's battle. It was God's battle!

We had a delicious picnic lunch and hit the road for our next stop at Beit Guvrin National Park, where we toured several excavated sites. We went to Columbarium Cave, and Yehuda explained the cave was used for a pigeon roost, and the people would use their eggs, they could eat the birds, and the guano was collected for use as fertilizer for their crops. Inside the cave it was very cool, and this was a welcome break from the heat and sun. Cool place, literally and figuratively! There were also Sidonian Caves, part of Maresha's Necropolis, which surrounded the city.

Then we had a two-hour drive to our hotel, Isrotel Ganim, Dead Sea. Along the way, we saw Bedouin villages, camels just standing around on the hillside, and part of the drive was along the border with the Gaza Strip. There is a large fence dividing the areas, and we learned that having a fence requires a 150 foot wide area, and a wall only requires about 15 feet. This difference is the reason a wall was built in the more heavy traffic areas like Jerusalem, and the fence was used in more open areas.

Our hotel is beautiful and the food is delicious and plentiful. The windows in my room face almost due east, and offer a great view of the Dead Sea. We were educated by our guide, this is no longer actually the Dead Sea, but rather the evaporation ponds, where sea water is diverted for harvesting the salts and other products used for manufacturing. He said there is so much table salt harvested there, that Israel doesn't know what to do with all of it. If memory serves me, I think he said about 115 tons are taken per year, and Israel only can use about 15 tons of it. We were advised to "take as much as you want home with you"!

As this day comes to an end, I am reflecting on several things I have learned, all of which were things I knew of before coming to Israel, but are now more personal and meaningful. For example, God loves us so much, He will prepare us and tend our soil and prune our vines, so we can do His work - if we will have faith and let Him in. Another example, from the story of David with his sling and stone; God can use anybody for His purpose. And if it seems like one is ill-equipped for what he is called to do, have faith that He will give you what you need, because if you can forget about your own sense of victory, and stand firm and steadfast in knowing that it is God's battle, you cannot fail. The problems of this world seem so huge, as they did in David's time, and he seemed an unlikely candidate for the job at hand. So don't discount the young people of today, who may be the hope we need.

And, finally, as I walked slowly along the rocky paths and up steep hills in the blazing sun, in my hi-tech, comfy, cushioned hiking shoes, and grumbled to myself about how sore and tender my feet were feeling, I thought about Jesus and the Disciples. Maybe they walked those same paths, in sandals or even barefoot, all day, for years, to spread the good news of Jesus Christ and of God's love for all people. I wonder if they ever complained about sore feet?

Thank you for reading,

—Terri Knight