Ruminations on Israel: DISCIPLINE

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Ironic that the day the word I pulled from the pocket in my backpack was 'Discipline'...would be the day I would totally forget to pull out my disposable camera to document what I was seeing about that word.

I didn't even take a pic with my cell phone to post to social media about what we were seeing.  All the pictures I took that day... which was Wednesday, May 29th...were with the digital camera.

I was in the moment, y'all.  In the moment.  And, as I don't have a specific picture to post for the day, I'm afraid you're going to get the whole day's pics....just a warning...

We began the day early...like, at 7:30 or some such thing...at the excavations on the Western Wall.  We entered the Old City through the Dung Gate; not the same Dung Gate that is mentioned in the Bible, since the existing walls were mostly built years after the Romans destroyed the city in 70 AD, but, still, it was somewhat near where the old Dung Gate would have been...near the Temple, for disposing of  ashes and remains from the altar sacrifices. And it's still ancient by our standards.  The Dung gate is mentioned in Nehemiah in his inspection and rebuilding of the city wall after the Babylonian exile. Currently, it is the entrance to the Western Wall.

We  walked by the area that's known as the Wailing Wall and went to the building that houses the entrance to the excavations.

One of the things that impressed me pretty much all day...how much excavation was being done, but, even beyond that, how much there was to excavate. It's mind-boggling that so much civilization can be buried beneath...stuff...and still remain to be found by those who dig.

The excavations along the Western Wall pretty much have gone down to the street level...

This is the street, at least a modern story's depth below the current street level, that ran alongside the Western Wall of the Temple Mount during the time of the Romans.  Jesus, his disciples, the apostle Paul, Stephen...all those folks most definitely walked on this pavement.  But it had to be painstakingly excavated to find it and test it and verify what it is.  All the work that went into that...that continues to go into that... is astonishing.    And the fact that it is still there, under the debris of the years is even more astonishing.

We also saw some of the cisterns that supplied the city with water; water was still in at least one; the drainage system is still working.

We came out of the excavations literally right onto a street in the Arab quarter that, as it happened, was part of the Via Dolorosa...

We didn't follow it all the way; we looped back around to spend some time at the Western Wall prayer area.  As we had been right at the Wall in the tunnels, I didn't feel like I needed to push my way through the crowd at the Wall there and chose a seat in a plastic lawn chair somewhat back from the Wall itself.  I prayed, I watched people,  and wondered how the ladies in the short dresses got in when we had been told we had to have our knees covered.

The next place we visited was the Southern Steps of the Temple.  Only a portion of the steps are still there; I'm not sure if they have actually been reconstructed from ruins laying about or if that corner managed to survive.  But it was interesting because the steps are uneven...Tisha (our guide) told us that scholars feel that was a device to make sure folks were paying attention as they came up the steps, so that no one came into the temple nonchalantly.

An aside...by this time it was pretty much straight up noon and it was HOT.

We walked around the corner and saw some more excavations; this one touched me in a different way. We are still along the Western Wall of the Temple mount; it has all been excavated.

Firstly, the stones of the wall here are large and beveled...which means they were stones laid by Herod's building program.  Stones added later were not so large.  Look at the top middle of the picture; there is a bit of a ledge that runs towards the scaffolding.  In the visitor's center, there is a photograph of a man sitting on that ledge...with his feet on the ground.  That's how much excavation has happened since that photo was taken (I wish I had made a note of when that was...but it was a quick mention as we went by and I didn't know what I was going to see at that point).  The stones jumbled up at the bottom are literally the debris from the Roman destruction of the site in 70 AD...those stones are still lying where they threw them over the retaining wall.  I felt almost as I had at Masada, looking at the siege works that were still visible.  Those were just there, unaltered, in the desert, but this was hidden and had to be dug out.

The last archeological site we visited was just a bit down the hill from the Temple site.  The excavations here are recent...again, I forgot the dates Tisha told us, but I'm thinking it's only been in the last 25 ish years that work was being done in this spot.

They feel they have possibly found what was David's palace...just down the hill from the Temple.  It's in more-or-less the right spot, and they think it is from about the right time.  Not much is left, but there are indications that it was once a very large structure.


I was taken by the VIEW David would have had...I didn't realize when I took this picture, but it is probably fairly close to what would have been the level of the roof.  When I found out where I was,  I realized...wow, he could have seen probably every roof in the city from his rooftop.  Easily.

We looked at some of the excavations...and, I'll be honest, I'm nothing of an archaeologist, so I really couldn't tell what I was looking at.

  But this bit of a pillar carving caught my eye...I could imagine that in a palace.

From the City of David excavations, we headed for lunch at a Jerusalem shuk...a farmer's market.  My lack of cash hurt me here; and the vendor I tried to buy a kibbe pita from couldn't process my Discover card. So I pulled out my emergency Star Kist Tuna Lunch Kit and proceeded to eat, much to the horror of my traveling buddies, who wanted to buy me a sandwich so I could experience Israeli food.    But it was ok.  It was so hot that I wasn't really hungry anyway, and I knew the tuna would not give me any...problems... We spent a couple of hours there; it was a large market and there was a lot to see and explore.  From there, we went back to the hotel for some rest and another ministry/ discussion session before supper. And I got so involved in journaling and  running down thoughts on the previous days that I was ten minutes late to the session.

So...what struck me about Discipline?  There's a lot that Tisha told us about excavations and archeology on the Temple mount that I couldn't begin to cover here...but there is a project in which volunteers sift through mounds of debris generated from Islamic construction on the Temple site itself.  And they are finding artifacts all the time in that debris. All of the archeology work struck me as requiring extreme patience and scholarly discipline to carefully uncover and research what was found.

So, how disciplined am I to dig into God's word regularly, looking for truth?  Researching what I find to make sure I understand where it fits and how it impacts other things uncovered?   Do I have the discipline to keep going until I find the bedrock?