Story Time

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

If you hang out on Facebook, you know there are memes and challenges and such that make the rounds...and every once in awhile, someone tags me in one.

Some I skip....because, well, it's just not something I have anything worthwhile to say on the subject..  Some I do when there's a more convenient time frame.

I got tagged in one last week that I decided to participate in.

The idea was that you post a picture of a book you love once a day for seven days...and challenge one other person each day to do the same.

Foster the love of reading!  Find out who loves the same books!  Maybe find another great read that you hadn't met yet!

Of the 7 people I tagged, only one actually did it.  Four gave it a pass...not the right time for them, or they just don't do those things.  Two appeared to be confused by the instructions.

But those things should come with a warning...because I sat down and re-read 5 of the books post haste...as in, I sat up past midnight every night re-reading one of the books I loved.  Here are the 5 I re-read last week:

Granted, most of them are very short.  I didn't re-read the first two that I posted ...Silverlock, by John Meyers Meyers and  C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy (yeah, I know, that was three books but it's one story, lol)...mostly because I knew it would take more than just a couple of hours to read those, so I resisted the siren call.  But by the third night I failed at resisting and jumped in and read.

I slept really late this morning, making up for lost sleep.

I didn't chose the obvious favorites...I tried to pick books that likely weren't going to show up on someone else's list.  But all of them were books that I have loved for years...although Ender's Shadow is a newcomer to the list that I found within the past 10 - 12 ish years.

But today, thinking about the books, I realized something.  If you asked me what my top favorite books are, the ones I read over and over...the list would be overwhelmingly fiction.  Not completely...some of Madeleine L'Engles non-fiction would be on the list...but generally speaking, my old friends are...stories.  And even the favorite non-fiction are autobiographical.  Which is, of course, story that is factual.

Stories have shaped my world view in a way that non-fiction,  however good, doesn't often do. I have read many really, really good topical books, but...I rarely quote them, and even though I remember that they were good and I learned from them, I can't really articulate what it was.  I can't think of many that I have read more than once

It's no wonder at all why Jesus used story so much.  Story tells truth in a way that we can remember it.  The illustrations of story make the lessons stick.

Something to keep in mind when the creative urge comes...

Ruminations on Israel: DISTRACTION

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

So, the second night we were in Tiberias, I took my Bible and journal down to the terrace by the seashore and did some journaling.  I eventually realized that a group of folks from our tour group were sitting under a gazebo, just kind of chatting.  My roomie had turned in early, and I wasn't quite ready to head up for sleep.  But...could I just, you know, walk over and join them?  The social awkwardness that I am prone to kicked in.  Most of them were young enough to be my kids.  I'm honest, I struggled.  Would I be intruding?  Finally, I just picked up my stuff, headed over slowly and asked, 'Hey, is it ok if I hang out too?'  The response was welcoming, so I sat down and just kind of chilled, listening as they talked about TV shows and podcasts and things that I was totally unfamiliar with.  But it was cool, just being part of the group.  About 9:30, the jet lag slammed me and I said my goodnights, hoping to make it all the way up to my room before falling asleep.

My roomie was asleep when I slipped into our room; she'd left bathroom light on, which was just enough to see to maneuver around.  I did my get-ready-for-bed routine as quietly as I could, and, just before I turned out the bathroom light I realized I didn't have my glasses to hand.  I looked on the night stand, which was where they should have been...no glasses.  I looked in the bathroom, thinking I'd left them there when I put on the face cream...no...I looked around at the other horizontal spaces..the desk, the  dresser...no sign of them.  Suddenly I wondered if I had left them outside on the table, since I would have pulled them off to read/write as the ol' over-40-nearsightedness thing means I can't read with them on.  I thought hard...had the faces of the folks been in focus when I was sitting in the gazebo?  If they were, I would have had my glasses on then and worn them upstairs.  I thought they were, but...honestly, I wasn't sure.  The light was not good.

But I wasn't about to go downstairs in my jammies, and I was planning to be down on the terrace early to take sunrise pictures. I didn't think it likely for anyone else to wander around that corner of the terrace before breakfast, so I figured if they were there I could get them then.  But I was bothered.

I woke up just before dawn, got dressed quietly and slipped downstairs with no vision correction, lol. The sun wasn't up yet and I wandered over to the table I'd sat at the night before.  No glasses.  Now I was annoyed.  But the dawn was coming, so I hung out and took some pictures, figuring my eyes didn't have to focus for the camera to do so...and it was a very pretty sunrise.

But I was still irritated by my missing glasses.  I headed up to the room; there was daylight breaking in around the curtains now and I could see.  I saw that I'd left my shirt from the night before on the foot of the bed...and when I picked it up, there were my glasses.

When my roommate got up, I laughed and told her what had happened.  She laughed with me and said, 'I think your word for today is 'Distraction!'

We had to have our bags outside our door before we went to breakfast,  so we were packing up and getting ready to put them out...and I reached into my backpack pocket and grabbed a card for the day's word.

'DISTRACTION'  was what was written on the card.  Now I laughed, because I didn't remember writing that one down.  But it was certainly on point.  Misplacing my glasses had certainly had me distracted that morning.

But there was more to come...we went downstairs for breakfast and I was shocked to see that fog had rolled in after such a pretty sunrise.  We couldn't see the other side...we could barely see the water on this side.

And I IMMEDIATELY heard in my spirit  'Distractions are a fog that keep you from seeing clearly.  And you can't do anything about it.  Fog has to be burned away by the sun.' 

Fog has to be burned away by the SON is what I perceived.  And grabbed my disposable camera and got a pic of the mist.

I chewed on that for a while; I tend to beat myself up for being distracted.  Getting to the end of a day and not accomplishing what I intended to accomplish.  Maybe...just maybe...the distractions aren't my fault (at least, not all of them).  Like my glasses...the jet lag had caught up and I was, literally, barely functional.  It's no wonder I wasn't paying attention to when I took them off or where I put them.  Ordinarily the shirt would have gone into the dirty clothes bag instead of being left on the foot of the bed.  And I hadn't even noticed it there the night before.  The physical exhaustion had been a distraction that kept me from even realizing I wasn't using due diligence in my night time routine.

So one distraction led to another distraction.

I heard more on distraction that day...we went to the Dead Sea and the whole setup was a distraction to me that kept me from enjoying what many folks consider a highlight of the trip.  We did a jeep ride in the desert; my expectations were a distraction that nearly kept me from going.  Hey, growing up in rural Indiana, Jeep riding (also called 'mudding' or '4 wheeling') was for the thrill of risk taking...up and down over hills, rocks, creeks, whatever could be found to push the limits of 4 wheel drive.  So I had some preconceived notions as I looked at the desert  through the tour bus windows and noticed Jeep tracks up and down some of the hills.  I am not into thrill seeking and quailed at the thought of riding a Jeep on those trails.  But this excursion wasn't for the thrill of the ride...the Jeeps were to get us to overlooks; viewpoints at the tops of hills that no roads went to.  The views were breathtaking.

And...one more thing to prove God has a sense of humor:  I had commented to someone that people go to Israel to find historical Jesus.  But I had been doing some writing based on Genesis, and I also was going to the desert to find Abraham.

Well, the lead Jeep driver talked to us at the best overlook, describing life in the desert.

I kid you not, his name was... Abraham.

And I almost let the distraction of my preconceived notions cause me to miss the moment.  I'm so glad I felt compelled to ignore the distraction of my fearful self and go.

Ruminations on Israel: DREAM/DREAMS

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

So, the word I drew on our second day in Israel was the obvious one...Dream/Dreams.  That was the obvious word, since I wanted to go and, well, find the creative and the dreams that I kind of lost somewhere...if I even acknowledged them to begin with.

We spent most of the day in Galilee...where Jesus spent most of his ministry time.  First, it was the mount of Beatitudes.   Now, how someone figured out it was THIS hillside instead of any of the other hillsides in the area, I have no idea.  There's a church at the top of the hill, with lots of flowers and commemorative stones and such around it.  It was really pretty...and we found a little group of benches; our guide, Tisha, pointed at the downslope just past the wrought iron fence and said that that was likely where Jesus addressed the crowds.  Rita talked to us about seasons.  'Winter is over,' she said, 'The season is changing.'  I really hadn't considered myself in winter, but I HAD used the words 'dry' and 'desert' to describe various aspects of ...well, lots of things.  We were given some time to process the area...walk around, journal, pray, whatever.  Everyone wandered off,  but I just moved back a bit behind a tree, slap up against the fence.   I parked myself as close as I could get to that spot and just...soaked.

The tent-like structures are covering banana plants, but I could imagine Jesus sitting under the tree, talking to the folks around him.  I thought about the Beatitudes...'Blessed/ happy is the one who....'  and wrote Blessed is the dreamer, for he will see what is hidden and not seen by others.  So...maybe I won't give up on dreaming...

Next stop...Capernaum.  Where Jesus lived during his ministry years, after he left Nazareth.  There were excavations down to the remains of buildings from the first century...ie, when Jesus was hanging in the area.  There's some of a house that's reputed to be Peter's...there's a church that's suspended above it.  Was it Peter's?  I don't know...but it was from the right time, so whoever lived there had to have known Jesus.

From there, we went to a museum that had one item on display...a fishing boat from the first century.  Or at least, what was left of it.  It had been covered with mud at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee until a number of years ago when a really bad drought dropped the level of water in the Sea to really, really low levels and exposed the floor.  We watched a video about the two brothers who found the boat...and one of them said, 'I had a dream that the Sea of Galilee would give us a treasure.'

So, I pulled out the disposable camera and actually turned on the flash, believe it or not.  But, well, it is what it is and this is the picture of the treasure that was the dream that came:

The metal frame is what is holding the boat together...after it was infused with some kind of glue/resin stuff to stop the wood from deteriorating.  Y'all...that's an ITTY BITTY BOAT.  It wouldn't take much of a storm to throw it around. Just sayin'

But...the last stop of the day was away from the sea, up in the mountain.  We went to Safed, to a home that serves underprivileged kids.  More of a care point than anything else, there were house parents who provide a place for the kids to come after school, do their homework, and basically be safe until their parents can get off work.  There are a number of these care points around Israel, and the ministry that organized our trip, Together for Israel, has adopted the care point we went to.  They took a summer outfit for each of the kids there, a bag of toys, and took the opportunity to dedicate a playground that had just recently been completed there for the kids.  They have undertaken to put a playground at every one of the care houses in the country...something like 56, if I remember right.  I think this one was number...4?  They fed us snacks, and the kids performed for us; the girls did a very athletic dance and the boys juggled sticks. Pretty amazing stuff.  Of course, we played with with the kids and their new volleyball set (there were way more of us in the tour group than the kids at the house, who looked to range in age from about 7 to about 11 or maybe 12), and God TV had a film crew there documenting what was going on.  It was cool, but the kids were amazing.  The house parents spoke a teeny bit of English (mostly, 'Welcome!' and 'Come, eat!') and the kids spoke none at all, so it was a very interesting afternoon.  One of the boys cried when we left...and there were more than a few teary eyes on the bus.

What a dream....to help kids who are God's very own heart.

initiating the volleyball net 
This area is almost all the play/yard available to the kids at the house.

Dreams may be more about other people than me.  Maybe I need to just get over myself and quit worrying about finding it.  Maybe the dream manifests in something that nobody will even connect with me.

And...that's gotta be ok....

Ruminations on Israel: KEYS

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

The pictures have been retrieved from the disposable camera and I have put them into my trip journal; I'm going to need to print a few of the ones I took with other devices because there were a couple of days/places that I was just so absorbed in the location that I *forgot* to pull out the disposable for my designated pictures.

So, here was the deal: we were told about a week before we left that we were going to be provided a journal for the trip, and we were to get 'a word for the day' for each day and then see what God would say/show us regarding that word...and the disposable camera was specifically to take pictures regarding that word on each day.

So I started, well, paying attention.  And it was interesting...over the course of the next few days, I would either be speaking to someone or thinking about something and one of the words would kind of echo in my head.  So I just wrote those words down on 3x 5 cards...and I had 7 words before we left.  My plan was to randomly draw a word for each day.

When I got the journal, I discovered that Rita had included pages for the travel time as well; I didn't have words for those days, lol!  So my 'word' discussion actually starts on the first day we were touring/ traveling in Israel...Saturday May 25th.  And the word I drew for Saturday was 'Keys'.

Now, I remembered why 'Keys' was one of the words.  I had a moment when I realized I would not need to take ANY keys with me for the trip...not car keys, not house keys, not work keys...my luggage didn't require keys so...no keys.  To my surprise, the idea of not having keys left me feeling odd; maybe even slightly vulnerable.  Interesting.  So it went on a 3x5.  And we had a fair amount of bus travel time for me to ponder keys as we traveled from Tel Aviv to Tiberias, catching a couple of sites on the way.

Keys represent security...control...authority...access.  I wrote "...maybe 'keys' isn't a word about locking/unlocking but about what makes me feel safe, secure and prepared."

I read somewhat from the Psalms of Ascent as we were traveling about heading ultimately to Jerusalem, and this was from the day's reading in Ps. 121:

The LORD will keep you from all evil, he will keep your life. The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever more.

Y'all...as I read that it hit me: GOD HOLDS ALL MY KEYS.

But as the day progressed...I discovered that 'key' has its own additional meaning.

The first site we visited was Caesarea Maritime, built by Herod, who built pretty impressive stuff.  There's an amphitheater there, with a fair amount of the structure remaining, that is still being used today; in fact, they were setting up for a concert while we toured the area.

  It was a port of some importance; and it was where Christianity first came to the Gentiles, when Peter came to Cornelius and preached the gospel to his friends and family.  It was there that Paul was held, first by Felix and then by Festus, and where he made his defense before King Agrippa, and from where he sailed on his journey to Rome for his trial before Caesar. Some of the mosiacs and the reflecting pool from the palace are still visible. Later that night, I wrote in my journal, 'Such a key place' purely by accident.

But the pic of the day came from our next stop...Mount Carmel...after an amazing meal at a restaurant owned by a Druze family (it was the Sabbath, after all, so no Jewish businesses were open).  We were the only folks there, but they had a spread.  The father introduced himself to us, saying 'My family is very happy to serve you dinner.  Please, come, eat!'  It was kinda like a church potluck in arrangement but it was very good.  I'm not terribly fond of falafel, but politely took some when it was urged on me and found that it was much, much better than the falafel I have eaten in Alabama...go figure, lol!

I thought we would have to hike up to the top, but the parking lot is right up by the summit; all we had to do was walk to the building there and climb the stairs to the observation platform.    I was not the only person there from our church; the pastors (husband/wife team) from one of our campuses also came, and I stood next to them overlooking the vast valley of Meggido (aka Armegeddon) and he commented, 'This is such a key location'.

I felt like Groucho Marx when someone said the secret word and immediately took a picture.

My sense of direction got a little skewed, but I'm pretty sure this is looking east...maybe a pinch southeast. 

And it hit me...keys are not only locking/ unlocking but also can also mean 'strategic'...well-planned, well-placed, in the right place at the right time, present at the moment of need.  And I realized that Elijah, in calling down the fire that day,  prayed,  "O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command.  Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again."  (1 Kings 18:36b -37).

In other words, there was a strategy at work here.  God had a plan. Once again...God has the key...planned and executed at HIS word, in His time.

As I recorded all this that night, I thought...this is going to be great.

A little Old Skool

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

A little glimpse into what I'm planning for the next few weeks...


Of course, I'm going to be talking about Israel.  I still have a lot of personal processing to do, so some of it is going to be blog material.

Rita sent us some instructions a few days before we left; we were told we would each be given a disposable camera, so we are kinda forced to take photos that are unfiltered and raw and...well, a mystery for a bit.

She also told us we were to come up with one word for each day, and then see what God would show us about that word, and we were to use the disposable camera to take pictures of anything that was related to the word.

So I came up with 7 words over the next few days, wrote each on a 3 x 5 card, and, when in Israel, drew a card to see what the day's word would be.

I have some really interesting stuff, and some that I haven't had time to chase down yet.  I decided to wait until I saw what the pictures actually were to start chasing.

I dropped the camera off at the local Walmart last night.   Went back to the photo section, which had posted hours of being open from 9 - 9.  There was, of course, no one in sight.  I wandered around a bit, trying to find an envelope or something to put the camera in.  Eventually, a staff person walked by and looked at me.  'I need to get some pictures developed!' I said.  She walked around behind the counter and pulled an envelope out of a pocket. 'Oh, great!' I said, 'I knew there had to be something like that around!'  I started filling out the contact info section, and she set the after hours drop box in front of me and walked off.

I honestly don't think she said a single word.

I sealed up the camera and dropped it into the box.  All the obvious signage seemed to indicate it would be ready in 24 hours, so I stopped by again on my way home from work. Again, no one was there, but this time I found the 'press button for service' and gave it a shove.

A different clerk wandered over, I told her I had dropped some pictures off for developing last night.  'What size?' she asked.  Well...it was a camera...'Name?' she asked.  I told her my name and she opened the file and flipped through a couple of index cards, then stopped.  'You dropped it off last night?' She asked.  Yes, I did.  'You put it in the after hours box?' She pointed to the box that had been set before me last night. Yes, I did.  'Oh, that's going to be next week.'  I was disappointed...I thought the signs said 24 hours. 'No, we don't do that.' She said and walked off.

So.  I will have my pictures next week.

Sometime.

And I'll talk about the 7 words and the picture that goes with the word.

Except for the day I forgot to pull out the disposable; I may have to fudge it w/ one of the pics I took with my lil' ol' cannon.

But at least I will have something worth visiting for, I hope.. ;-)

Meantime, here's a pic I haven't posted on Facebook...

Sunrise in the Judean desert...5/28/19

Jet Lag is a Thing.

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

The Eastern Gate from the Mount of Olives.  

I've been good during the day...but about 8:30 at night, boom, I hit a wall and can do nothing but crawl into bed, where I dream I'm still in Israel and wake up disoriented.

I assume this will go away soon and I'll be back to normal; likely wondering if it really happened, lol.

We had an amazing trip. Several folks have asked me what my favorite site was; I really can't answer that, although I can say that I learned the most at Masada.  (I looked it up on Wikipedia; the details there don't *quite* match up to what our very learned guide told us.)  I only had a vague notion of a battle there, and I thought it had to do with the Maccabees, so I was in the wrong historical period all together. 

I had a lot of incorrect assumptions about many things; seeing how it really is was...amazing.  The Sea of Galilee is much, much smaller than I had expected; the Dead Sea is much bigger, for all that is is evaporating at a rate of about 3 feet per year (plans are being made to bring in water from the Red Sea to stabilize the water levels).  The desert is rocky...and looks almost Martian.  Jerusalem's hills are very steep and the valleys are narrow.

I've been posting pictures in batches to my Facebook feed; putting notes on them as I go.  But I can only do short batches in the evening before the jet lag hits and I lose my ability to spell at all, along with my ability to compose a coherent sentence with all the words in it.

The travel itself...the flights in and out of New York, and the 11+ hour flights between New York and Tel Aviv...was a test of endurance.  I had long layovers in New York both coming and going, and the last one was especially rough because every time I sat down, I started to nod off to sleep.  I was afraid I'd fall sound asleep and miss my boarding call for the flight back to Nashville, so I spent a lot of time just walking around the terminal and telling myself I could sleep on the plane once we boarded.  But, once I finally got on board that last plane, I got afflicted with what my grandma called 'the heebie-jeebies' in my legs...the muscles were twitching and spasming in a very itchy and irritating way.  I had a window seat, which would have been good had I been able to lean against the cabin wall and snooze, but with my restless legs I was bordering on claustrophobia.  It was an exercise in self talk  "It's only 2 hours... it's only an hour and 45 minutes....it's only 90 minutes...' etc.

I was really glad to stand up when we got to Nashville.  I told My Sweet Baboo that if I go again with him...we are going to upgrade the seats! 

I have to admit, I am a terrible skeptic.  I know that there were unscrupulous folks in the  middle ages who took advantage of folks on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, selling them bogus relics.  I wondered if those same shysters had created semblances of holy sites, insisting that, for instance, that particular slope was where Jesus taught the Beatitudes.  But there's  no doubt that Jesus taught on the southern steps of the Temple, which have been excavated. And the Garden of Gethsemane is still there, with its 2,000 year-old olive trees that could tell us of Jesus's prayers, if they could talk.  Capernaum is excavated...and maybe the house identified as belonging to Peter didn't really belong to Peter, but it was there at the right time; someone lived in it who would have been known to Jesus.

And the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found are there to be seen, having sheltered the incredible texts that prove that the Old Testament scripture we have today is fundamentally unchanged from the texts of Jesus' day.

 I have a lot of personal processing to do still; I came home Saturday night, pretty well zonked, and have just managed to do what I need to do in the daylight before getting zonked again, so the only processing I've done so far is to write the little blurbs for the Facebook posts.  

It was an amazing trip and I'm ever so glad I went.