Israel-in-Depth with Rod VanSolkema

June 22 - July 4, 2018

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Who is influencing who?

Our first full day in Israel was a success! We pushed though the jet lag and exhaustion and packed a lot into a day and ended the day swimming with a magical sunset in the Dead Sea. There is a lot I could say about all we took in, but I’ll take a few moments to lay out what we we did, and then a few more moments to reflect on those places and the things God was stirring in my heart.

Today we learned about life in the shephelah. Shephelah is the land between the coastal plains and the mountains, or in other words, the foothills. The philistines lived on the coast, a place where only the strong survived. Jerusalem was placed in the mountains, a mouse in a world full of cats. This meant that the shephelah was the home of all major battles & a place where Israel would either rise up to the call of putting God on display for the world, or shy away in fear.

Throughout the day we visited 4 different cities; Gezer, Tel Sorek, Shaaraim, & Leckish. Each city was the home of a different biblical stories. Tel Sorek was Sampsons hometown, right outside of Shaaraim was where the battle of David and Goliath took place, and Leckish was the final city Sennacherib had to conquer before reaching Jerusalem while Hezekiah was king. We talked about city gates & standing stone and the significance they each had in their respective places.

Gezer

Situated near the International Coastal Highway and guarding the primary route into the Israelite hill country, Gezer was one of the most strategic cities in the Canaanite and Israelite periods. Gezer is a prominent 33-acre site that overlooked the Aijalon Valley and the road leading through it to Jerusalem. The tel was identified as biblical Gezer in 1871 by C. Clermont-Ganneau who two years later found the first of many boundary stones inscribed with the city’s name.

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It’s hard to put into words the feelings and emotions felt while at these sites. It’s one thing to read the story of David and Goliath, it’s a surreal experience to overlook the valley where the battle took place and to imagine the 13 year old on the trip walking down that exact mountain in order to face a giant. It’s one thing to read about Sampson and David’s time spent in caves, it’s another thing to sit in the caves where they may have sat and wrestle through where the dark nights of our soul should lead us.

Life in shephelah poses 1 question: who is influencing who? Are the cities occupying those spaces allowing the world below to dictate who they are or are those cities taking a stance to truly be a city on a hill? We wrestled through those questions on a personal level. Am I letting the world get a grip on me and dictate who I am? Or am I letting Christ use a broken human being, to spread the good news on whatever streets I occupy, all for his glory and fame?

For me, today was both convicting and challenging. I was convicted with how I handle my darkest days. God calls us into community and gives us people to walk through those pits with us. Too often I try to do it all alone. I try to be Sampson and do it all out of my own strength, rather than David who looks to the heavens with shouts of praise while in a pit. I was challenged by the call to rise up in faith. To take a stance and not dance around the line we draw in the sand. To let the fact that Christ has spoken for my heart and for my life become something that influences my world every single day.

So I am going to leave you with two questions that Rod left with us this morning. Who are you? And why are you here? You’re “here” can be anywhere; that factory you work in, that college you attend, that neighborhood you live in. You’re “here” doesn’t have to be glamorous, it doesn’t have to be new, it doesn’t have to produce the best pictures for Instagram or have to be in some cool city. It just has to be the placed where God has assigned you to bring Shalom to Chaos.

Lachish

Identified first as Lachish by Albright in 1929, the tell was excavated by James Leslie Starkey 1932-38 and by Tel Aviv University 1973-87.

Lachish is generally regarded as the second most important city in the southern kingdom of Judah. It enters the biblical narrative in the battle accounts of Joshua, Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar.

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