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....