“You will not be able to describe this trip. You will not be able to tell people back at home what you have experience here. You will not be able to even discuss it amongst yourselves. But Israel’s not here to make you a better witness, its here to make you a better servant.”
This was said to us by Moshe, an Orthodox Jewish shopkeeper who we visited on our first day in the Jerusalem. I know that’s no way to start a blog, telling you I can’t explain to you anything. But please try to understand, these are the fullest days I have ever experienced, I can barely sort through them myself. I mean that in the most wonderful way possible.
How am I to become a better servant here? I keep asking myself this. To listen and to learn are first in my head. We are studying “the geography and history of Israel as it impacts the Bible and Modern Life.” That is my class title. I am studying freaking everything and am overjoyed about it. For the past couple weeks, as Europe was coming to a close, I kept wondering why I came on this trip. I did not really care much about European cities, I certainly did not care about WWII, and I did not just come for the food and shopping. I have not acted like I did most of the summer and was stripped of many comforts from home that I treasure... so why the hell was I here.
In the middle of our first class day in Jerusalem I remembered- THIS is why I signed up for this trip, THIS is why I’m here. And God did so many things before we came to Israel (like handing me beautiful relationships and encouraging me to fall deeply in love with art), but this is why I’m here. To see and learn this.
On our field first day, starting at 7 AM, we explored the nature of the land, the names of the valleys and hills of Jerusalem. We went into the City of David to see (potentially) the foundation stones of Kind David’s palace. We went to high rooftops to see the different views of the city. We saw ancient houses and walls from the time of King Hezekiah. But the highlight of the day was all 42 of us walking through Hezekiah’s tunnel. Hezekiah’s tunnel was made around 400 BC, carved through the mountain bedrock by hand with torches, meant to channel water from the Gihon Spring to the completely other side of the city. We got to walk through it, in the dark with flashlights water above our knees laughing and yelling. We are on adventures e v e r y d a y in this place.
After lunch at JUC (Jerusalem University College) we had an intro to our course lecture. We went until 5:30 PM. Such long days. And then back to the hotel for dinner. Lunch and dinner always have so many olives and hummus and vegetables, I have missed vegetables so much.
Today we started at 7:30 AM and explored the 4 quarters of the Old City (Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Armenian). We saw the Western Wall and discussed the many city walls during the times of Herod and Great and Hadian of Rome. We saw the old streets and the shopkeepers selling a variety (from belly dancing outfits and earrings to prayer shawls and rosaries to bras and socks to spices and produce). We walked along the rooftops and saw the city look united from above. We sang beautiful harmonies of ‘Come Thou Fount’ and the Doxology in a Crusader church near the Pool of Bethesda from John 5. We then had lunch and class until 5:30 again. In class we discussed the types of rock and disciplines of historical geography.
But the part I loved the most was the lecture on the Agricultural Calendar of this region. Our calendar had all the months of the year with the rainy and dry season, showing the time for harvesting each crop, and the dates for the major Jewish festivals. We then discussed passages from the New Testament where Jesus fully relates what he’s saying to this agricultural lifestyle of the people. His fulfillment of each festival (not just Passover) was pure joy for me to learn about.
I must tell you my favorite example. When Jesus speaks in John 7:37-38 he says “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” Jesus spoke this in the final day of the Feast of Tabernacles. This feast is at the very end of the dry/ harvest season where the people thank God for the harvest he has provided. They pray each day with this thankfulness, and on the last day of the festival they turn their prayers into requests for God to bring the early rains. Their cisterns are getting low in water and all the people are in fact thirsty. So Jesus’ timing is, as always, perfect. And he claims not no only to be God, who provides the rain for his chosen people, but to be the one who can give living water.
Seeing this relationship unfold between God, his people, and the land is beautiful. I am loving this so much. I will leave you with Psalm 125:1-2, which is meaning more and more to me every day-
“Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people both now and forevermore.”
so proud, i am.
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