Day 01 - Hostage Square, Nova Memorial, Jaffa

Boker Tov (Good Morning) from Israel!

We woke up this morning in Tel Aviv. We’re still a bit jet-lagged, but on the whole feeling less tired than yesterday (at least most of us are)!

Our day began in the ancient city of Jaffa (or Joppa if it’s often called in the Bible).

Jaffa turns up in two primary places.

The first is in the book of Jonah. It is from Jaffa that Jonah sets sail for Tarshish - the exact opposite direction of where God had told him to go.

The second time is in the book of Acts. The Apostle Peter was staying in Jaffa when God gives him a thrice repeated vision of a sheet coming down from heaven carrying a whole slew of animals prohibited for eating in the Old Testament dietary laws. He tells Peter to kill and eat, to which Peter argues that he’s never eaten anything unclean before! But God says, “Don’t declare anything to be unclean that I have made clean” (Acts 10:15).

Just as Peter’s vision comes to an end, messengers from a God-fearing Gentile (a non-Jewish man) named Cornelius arrive. Cornelius has also had a vision in which God told him to send for Peter. The point of Peter’s vision, of course, was that Peter should not declare unclean that which God has made clean - including people. Even Gentiles.

So, Peter, departing from Jaffa, goes to Cornelius in Caesarea to preach the gospel to him.

He gets only partially through his sermon before the Holy Spirit descends upon Cornelius and he and his whole household are baptized as a public declaration of their faith in Jesus.

And from that point forward, the gospel began expanding outward - starting in Jerusalem, then to Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, including to those once considered “unclean,” unworthy, of an invitation to relationship with God.

Here’s the point.

If you’re a Gentile and you follow Jesus, this story is part of your story. It is, to an extent, the ancient entryway to your hearing the gospel two thousand years later.

As a point of reflection, how are you serving as an entryway? Who can you tell? If you want to get really honest, who do you not want to tell because they are, in your eyes, “unclean”? They look different than you, think different, vote different, fill-in-the-blank different?

Consider taking a bit of time to go read Acts 10 and reflect on what God might want to teach you and how he might want to challenge you through that story.

The rest of our day was heavy, to say the least.

We made our way south to the city of Sderot - one of the major locations attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

The war over the last two years has, of course, been highly controversial. There are, of course, heartbreaking stories of Palestinian civilians caught in the literal crosshairs of this war.

But this is a place of the heartbreaking things done to Israeli civilians. It’s a place where bombs were dropped, and terrorists entered the city to gun down men, women, and children celebrating Shabbat (the Sabbath) on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah - a celebration of having completed another cycle of Torah reading in the synagogue.

On the evening of Simchat Torah, the people dance through the streets, holding up the Torah, praising God for His Word. There was no dancing in the streets that evening. There was weeping. There was mourning. There were children left without parents, husbands left without wives, wives left without husbands, friends left without friends. There were children kidnapped and hostages taken.

It was, to wildly understate it, a sobering experience.

From there we went to a second location of the October 7 attacks - Re’im.

On the evening of October 6, the Nova Music Festival began at Re’im. It was supposed to last for until the following evening, but early that morning, the partygoers heard the sound of incoming rockets and, soon after, numerous terrorists flooded the grounds and began indiscriminately killing anyone trying to escape.

378 Israelis died in the attack, 44 were taken hostage, 15 of which have so far died in Gaza.

Like Sderot, it was a heartbreaking place to be, to imagine what that morning must have been like, to think about sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends went to a concert and never came home.

We finished up in Hostage Square, where the families of those taken hostage encamped in the days after the attacks. It’s been a place for rallies and protests demanding the release of the remaining hostages. It’s lined with pictures and stories of those men and women. There is a table set with a seat for each of the hostages. There’s a piano in honor of one hostage who plays with an invitation for anyone to sit down and play for him. There’s a tunnel that’s been constructed based on the tunnels in Gaza where the hostages have been kept.

It was a hard day. It was coming face to face with the deep evil that can reside in the human heart, though by no stretch the extent of what Israeli has been experiencing for two years.

It was a day of longing. It was a day of anxiously awaiting God to fulfill His promise.

“I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, 'Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever'.” (Revelation 21:3-4, NLT)

Come, Lord Jesus.