Ruminations on Israel: What Changed?

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

A good friend asked me when I returned, 'What changed because you went to Israel?'  She went on to say that she had always been told that going to Israel was life-changing...and she wanted to know what, in my life, had changed.

What a challenging question!  Because it's really easy now to almost forget it happened.  Back home, back in the routine, with a few extra Facebook friends and some cool pictures  to prove that I ventured out of the comfort zone.  But, to all appearances, life goes on as it was.

And yet...

On our last Dive session, before our last meal together on the beach in Tel Aviv, Rita asked us all to think about what we would be leaving in Israel.  What would we not take back with us?  I had a long ponder on that.  What had I learned...about me?

I learned I could join.  I've written at odd times about my inherent social awkwardness; there are some old childhood emotional wounds that I can relate that probably are the root of that, and a  number of more recent wounds that reinforced it...the feeling that I'm not really accepted, that I'm an annoyance, that I don't have anything to offer.  But every time I took a breath and took the risk to join a group...I found that they actually didn't seem to be too offended by me wanting to hang out with them.  In fact, I was...welcomed.  Joining the group was accounted to me as grace and ease and even kindness.  I was flabbergasted and at one point even suppressed a hoot because...wow, the opinion expressed was something I had NEVER heard anyone say about me before.  Gracious?  Easy to be with?  KIND???? Are you really talking about ME???  I immediately thought of some events in the past year that certainly would have brought people to dispute that opinion.  Or...that I would expect to dispute that opinion.  But maybe it was my perception that was off.

And as I thought about that, I suddenly wondered...could I leave that social awkwardness thing in Israel?That thing that EXPECTS to be misunderstood and rejected?    It seems like every time I have tried to move beyond it...when I have decided it was time to be bold and move with conviction and confidence I have slammed into a brick wall and had to eat humble pie for behaving in a way that others perceived as inconsiderate, trouble-making, insensitive and/or presumptuous. Will that happen again if I try to move beyond the basic distrust of myself and the protective hedge of the hang-back and be-quiet, stand-on-the-perimeter-and-smile, shut-up-and-be-accommodating, socially awkward me? If I do try to shed that skin...again...will I be grabbed and stuffed back into it...again? 

God, I prayed, CAN I leave that here?  Is that even possible?


To my surprise, I felt suddenly very sure that it could happen.  It was possible.  And I saw a glimmer, like, through a door that was cracked just a bit open, of something bright and hopeful.  A breath of fresh clean air blowing from a new place.   I felt, for just a moment, of what it would feel like to live beyond that.

For the second time in 24 hours, my perception of myself shifted slightly.  I didn't have what I would call a breakthrough; it wasn't earth-shaking.  But there was a shifting.  It may be a while before the actual change manifests enough to really make a difference in things.  But I can believe now that such a change is coming.

Ruminations on Israel: FEAR

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

A little backstory on what went down on Friday morning, the last day we were in Israel...

Rita went to Israel last year and posted about a place she had stumbled across in Old Jerusalem...a business that had been in the same family since the days of the Crusaders.

They were tattoo artists.

She wrote a social media post about them, and mentioned that in that era, with no passports, the tattoos served as a testimony that the person had actually been to a place.  Pilgrims to Jerusalem were tattooed by the ancestors of the current owners.  As Rita was on staff at a church, she just said, 'I might have gotten one.' 

I read that story and was very intrigued.  I have basically zero interest in getting tattooed for artsy fashion's sake; no judgement against folks who are in to that; I just don't care for the way they look. And I don't get the urge to permanently alter skin.  But I could understand a tattoo as a reminder of the experience.

(I'm not entirely sure that this is the place, but so far as I know, it's the only one that fits the descriptions I've heard. And it's near the Jaffa gate, which is the location we were discussing.)

So there was always a kind of buzz amongst the folks on the trip...were we going to go to the tattoo shop?  If we did, who would get a tattoo?  What tattoo?  I commented to my pastor friends who were also on the trip...and who know my family...that I was a little leery of getting a tattoo, because of the precedent it would set in the family.  I mean, if Mom got a tattoo...even a very teeny one for a remembrance...it could mean the kids would decide to get all inked up.   I wasn't sure I wanted to open that door.

But by the time Thursday night rolled around, I felt like it was something I wanted to do.  They had to know who was committing to going for the tattoos on Friday morning.  But, remember, at this point I had no cash left.  "If they will take my credit card, I will go."  I said.  I was assured that the credit card would not be a problem there.

So Thursday night I had a rather odd feeling.  I looked at my wrist, where I figured I would get the image, thinking, 'This is the last night my wrist will look like this.'  I wasn't sure what I would get; I wanted to see what kinds of designs the pilgrims would have gotten centuries ago.  But, as there were 12 of us going, we were told that we could only get small designs that could be done in 15ish minutes each.  That was fine; I only wanted a teeny, simple design anyway.  I had in the back of my head that I would get a simple Jerusalem cross, if I could, but my plan was to just get the smallest, simplest traditional design.

But I had always believed it was not entirely appropriate for followers of God to get tattooed.  I mean, there is that verse in Leviticus that says, bluntly, 'do not...put tattoo marks on yourselves.' (19:28).    What was I going to do with that?  Was that regarding all tattoos, ever, or just in the context of the verse...somehow commemorating dead people?  A few verses above is the instruction 'do not eat meat with the blood in it'...am I routinely breaking that one every time I enjoy a pink-juicy medium rare steak?  Of course, the blood was drained before it was butchered, but still...

I finally reminded myself that I am not Jewish, and the Jewish law, per se, was given as instructions for living in a land of pagan people so that the Hebrews would maintain a distinct culture and identity.  Jesus fulfilled the law.  So, ultimately I put it in God's hands...because, you know, they might *not* take the card and I wouldn't be able to do it.

But I fully expected that there would be no problems.   I don't like pain and I don't like needles, but I felt like this was still something I wanted to do. I did natural childbirth four times; I could endure fifteen minutes of needle pricking.

And, here's the weird thing.  My perception of who I was shifted slightly that night.  The tattoo would change my self image.  It took some moxie...some self confidence...neither of which I have ever really felt were true of me.  It wouldn't just be making a declaration about being in Israel...it would mean I would step over a character definition of myself that I have carried for a long, long time.  Part of me quailed, not wanting to make that shift. But it was time to move into a different perception.  I told my timid self to be quiet.

So, Friday morning, I got up for the early bus call and packed up.   But I pulled the last card from my backpack pocket, not even trying to remember what it might be.

It was 'Fear'.

I thought of my mental journey the night before and realized that this was a day to conquer fear.  It almost seemed like a confirmation that I was doing the correct thing.   The twelve of us who committed to being tattooed ate breakfast, turned in our keys, loaded our luggage, and got aboard the bus. We were going to get dropped off at the Jaffa Gate, then the bus would return to the hotel for the rest of the group and they were going to meet us there about three hours later.

But we sat on the bus for a good ten to fifteen minutes past our departure time.  Finally, our tour guide got on and told us why.

There had been a terrorist incident at the Damascus gate of the old city (remember, this was the final day of Ramadan). A couple of folks had been attacked by a knife-wielding individual; one had died.  The security people had closed all the gates to the old city.  It didn't look like we were going to be able to get in.  'But,' she said, 'It may reopen if they decide the threat was eliminated so we will try.'
Fifteen minutes later, we approached the Jaffa gate and saw all the security people there; it was not open.

So, no tattoos, and no old city tour, which was what was scheduled that morning.  We went back to the hotel and kind of twiddled our thumbs until the rest of the group was ready to go.

But, with the security issues in the old city, and no access to sites on the east side, what would we do?

We would visit the Yad Vashem -- the Holocaust Memorial.  It had not been on our itinerary originally...the idea had been to visit places, not museums.  But the circumstances being what they were...  Our leaders apologized to us for not keeping to the plans and for disappointing those who wanted tattoos, but, you know, it was ok.  I was happy to trade the chance for the tattoo to be able to visit the Yad Vashem; it seems to me to be the least we can do to honor the memory of those who died so senselessly.  While we were headed over, Tisha told us that there are three places one must visit in order to begin to understand Jewish folks...Masada, the Western Wall, and the Yad Vashem.

We had about two and a half hours.  She first took us to the children's memorial...that is gut wrenching.  Mirrors reflecting lights in such a way that there is one light visible for each child that died in the Holocaust...and their names, ages, date of death, and country are read out.  It is beautiful and heartbreaking.  There are 1.5 million children who died in the Holocaust.

We were a very somber...and rarely dry-eyed...bunch as we walked from the Children's memorial to the entrance to the main hall of the museum.

I was prepared for an emotional experience.  What I wasn't prepared for was the fact that we were not the only tour group who had experienced a change of schedule.  I was at first determined to move through it as slowly as I could and see and learn as much as possible.  However, not long after we entered the museum, a very large group came in...maybe even two or three groups that arrived at the same time.  I was soaking in the first exhibit...a spliced together film of Jewish folks going about their business before the Holocaust began, taken from all over Europe.  It was very well done, and I kind of forgot where I was as I watched it.  Suddenly, I became aware that there were a lot of people moving around me and decided I'd better move on.

The museum is laid out in chronological order; alcove-like rooms on either side of a main vaulted hall way, with the path zigzaging its way down the length of the hall.  I remember very little of the first room; it was absolutely packed with people.  I tried to move through and read all the descriptive texts but I soon realized that was not going to be possible...then I realized I could barely move at all and began to get claustrophobic.  Before long I was just trying to get through the press of people  so I could breathe. 

Once I got ahead of the large group I could slow down a bit and read the signs on the exhibits and watch the videos, but my whole museum experience was first and foremost staying ahead of the group.  Occasionally I would get so absorbed in what I was looking at that I forgot to keep moving and would get overtaken by the leading edge of the large group...which also had two or three tour guides leading smaller groups in the whole and were all moving more or less together...and so I would have to scoot along to avoid getting overwhelmed again.

Y'all, that really struck me.  Looking at all the pictures of people crammed into ...train cars....barracks...gas chambers...and I couldn't handle one room uncomfortably full.  But I could move and get free.  All of those folks...they could not. 

But I did manage to learn a bit in my accelerated journey.  One of the things that grieved me was that it wasn't just the Germans who killed folks as I read of the massacres in Vilnius...where Lithuanian volunteers carried out a large number of the killings.

Then I came to the story of the Danish Jews, who were rescued by the Danish government.  I read the story of the flotilla that delivered so many to safety in Sweden and wanted to just holler out, 'Go, Denmark!!!'  because they seemed to be the one bright spot in the litany of horror.  90 percent of Danish Jews survived, because the Danish leaders took action to save them.

There were stories of people who escaped by migrating to then-Palestine...and some who tried but were not allowed to enter and were sent back to the killing fields and gas chambers.  But some were able to stay.  And those built kibbutzim and communities and, as the final view of the museum proves, a nation.

The inscription on the arches reads, 'I will put my breath into you and you shall live again, and I will set you upon our own soil....' Ezekiel 37:14

I have written and deleted several little wrap-up statements for the post...but you know, I think that doesn't need anything else.

Ruminations on Israel: INTIMACY

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Down to two cards in my backpack pocket...and the one I pulled for Thursday the 30th was 'Intimacy'.  

Jerusalem, day two.

We began by walking through the Lion Gate and taking a quick right turn to what used to be the location of the Pool of Bethesda.

It's interesting...the ruins there are not the remnants of the Pool of Bethesda but of a church that was built early in the Christian period.  There is another church adjacent to the site, St Anne's...because someone decided this was where Mary's mother was born?  Not sure how they got that, since Mary was from Nazareth, but whatever.  That church should have been destroyed as well in the post-Crusades wave, but, well, for some reason the Muslims liked it and used it as a school.  So it's still there.  And it's beautiful, with legendary acoustics.  Every group that comes in is allowed to go to the front of the church and sing two songs.  I wondered who Rita would ask to lead the singing...she'd asked several of the ladies with us to do worship at different times.  But when it was our turn, we all went up to the front, and Rita began singing 'Defender' and we joined in.

Facepalm.  Of course.

And I didn't get ANY pictures...I was in the moment again.  But other folks got video.  When we left the church, Tisha went to Rita and showed her the recording she'd gotten.  'I've never seen the light do that!' she exclaimed.  'I waited and took more video and look..it's still there!'

I didn't see the video, but suddenly some of the folks in the group came up to me and said, 'You were in a pool of light!  It was awesome!  God was highlighting you!'

I hadn't noticed any light.

And I didn't get to watch the video...I just never really got the chance.  But part of me didn't want to see it...I figured I'd see something that explained it and I didn't want an explanation, lol.  Alba, one of the others in our group, asked me what my word for the day was.  I told her, and she looked at me with wide eyes. 'In-to-me-see!' she said.  'God has got His eye on you!'

Something for me to ponder, for sure.

Our next stop was the site that folks believe could have been Caiphas' house, the first place Jesus was taken for his trial before the Sanhedrin....and the place where Peter denied he knew Jesus.   This was my 'Disposable Camera' shot of the day...

If this was really Caiphas' house, then that was the courtyard.... (notice, if you can,  the teeny iron rooster on top of the pillar).  The folks who had arrested Jesus made a fire in the middle there, and sat around, waiting to see what would happen.  Peter joined them...and was outed by a servant.  He denied it.
Two more folks also pegged him as being one of Jesus's disciples.  Peter, no doubt sweating bullets,  denied it each time.  After the third time...

Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed.  The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter.  Then Peter remembered the word the Lord has spoken to him... Lk 22:61


What  Luke doesn't mention is that Jesus had been inside the house; they had to have been leading him out to take him to Pilate for him to look straight at Peter, .  And Jesus turned and looked straight at Peter.  He didn't have any chance to see where Peter was; it was breaking dawn.  Jesus knew right where Peter was.  In the midst of his own stress, he knew...and cared...and thought about...and LOOKED AT Peter.  That, my friends, is the intimacy level we have with Jesus.  He knows where we are, individually, on so many levels.  And he still looks at us, right at each of us at that moment when we've let him down. He still connects.  In to me, see.

Selah.

We got back on the bus, and, you know, there are folks all over who are selling stuff; our driver/tour guide team had a friend who made jewelry whom they let peddle his wares on the bus.  And, yeah, I bought a necklace, but the guy told our bus driver something that no one had thought of.  See, it was the last week of Ramadan while we were there, and the next day was the final day of the holiday.  The guy reported that the streets would be full of Muslims celebrating the last day...and the whole east side of the city would be inaccessible to tour buses.  We were going to do the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Palm Sunday route on Friday, but, well, all of that was on the east side.  So there was a hasty consultation and the plans were changed; instead of doing that on Friday, we headed over to the east side of the city...at noon...to see those sites while we could.

I did, of course, get the picture of the Temple Mount from the Mount of Olives, you've all seen that.  But maybe you haven't seen a picture of the road they call 'Palm Sunday Road', because it's where Jesus rode on the donkey while all the folks waved palm branches and celebrated.

The road runs through a cemetery, which I'm pretty sure wasn't there then, but it was surprisingly steep.  And I imagine it has been graded somewhat for an actual road; it may have been even steeper in the first century.  The Garden of Gethsemane is down the hill considerably; I had always thought it was well up the hill, maybe even near the top.  But it isn't.

There is one part of the olive grove in what is called Gethsemane that has trees that are over 2,000 years old.  Amazing.  Is this really the grove where Jesus prayed?   It looks very likely as...the olive trees are still there.   Luke 21:37 tells us, regarding what we now call Holy Week, between the triumphal entry and the last supper, that  

Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives.'  The next chapter, after the Seder meal had been eaten and Judas had left to take care of his urgent business,  we find Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him.  On reaching the place, he said to them, 'Pray that you will not fall into temptation.'  He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed,  (22:39-41). 

 Here's a thought... I believe Jesus went to the same spot every night so that Judas would know where to find him.  How easily he could have just ...gone somewhere else...and avoided the whole ordeal.  But he deliberately went to the place he had established, a place that was far away from houses and folks who could hear the commotion.  It was his choice.

We were in the garden, and the Church of All Nations there, for a good bit.  And they were beginning to close it down when we left, because of Ramadan.  Our friendly necklace craftsman had given us good advice.

We went to an open air mall just outside the Jaffa Gate for lunch; some folks went into the old city there for some shopping but as I was cash-strapped I just walked around the mall.   People watching was interesting; there was a bit of shade and it didn't hurt me to walk a few laps around.  But I was glad when the time was up and the group headed out.

We had an appointment at the Garden Tomb in the late afternoon, that was....interesting.  They provide their own guides, so Tisha was not telling us the details there.  We had a very, very sweet lady who took us around the property...she would have been perfect had we been first graders.  I am not complaining; there were some interesting things she told us.  Her style was just dramatically different from our regular guide.  One of the things she told us is that Jesus was likely crucified at the bottom of the hill, not the top.  There was a pretty major ancient road that ran  right by the bottom of this hill, and the Romans were known for putting their crucifixions right along the public roads, so as to be a deterrent to anyone considering defying the government.  So, yes, it would make good sense for the crucifixion to have happened at the bottom of the hill.

Now, here's where I get a little skeptical. There is a lot of conflicting opinion about where Golgotha and the tomb were.  We didn't have time to go to the other site, so I can't speak for it.  But I wonder how well preserved these things could be after all this time.  Here's the proposed site for Golgotha:

You can sort of see the skull-like features; there apparently was something sort of like a nose but it eroded away within the last 100 years or so.  And there's a bus station at the base of the cliff that has landfilled it in considerably.  Could this be the Place of the Skull?  Or could this be a place that was kind of chiseled out by  opportunistic locals to take advantage of the pilgrims of the middle ages?  I honestly don't know.  John tells us that

At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid.  Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.  (John 19:41-42).

I will be honest, I had never caught that before...that the tomb was near to Golgotha.  We know from other scriptures (Lk 23:50-54, Mark 15: 42  46, Matthew 27:57 - 60) that Joseph of Arimathea was responsible for putting the body of Jesus in a new tomb; Matthew states that it was Joseph's own tomb.  So I had just more or less figured it was some distance from Golgotha. What coincidence would put Joseph's new tomb handy to the crucifixion?  But...John says it was.  And there is  a winepress  (or maybe it was an olive press?) near the maybe-Golgotha hill, indicating that there was likely once a vineyard or garden in that place.

And then, someone discovered a tomb that had been cut out of the side of the hill.

Has that been there 2000 years?  Or did someone excavate that 900 years ago and sell tickets to the same gullible folks who took home shards of wood that they believed were splinters of the cross, along with other and even some truly bizarre purported relics?  Again...I don't know.  But...there is a hill with the semblance of a skull along a busy thoroughfare near a garden with a tomb.  If it's faked, it was done very well.

And you know, even if it is faked, the real thing probably didn't look so very different. And maybe it does't matter whether I was at the real site or 12 miles from the real site which might be overgrown and overlooked and anonymous.  I was in Jerusalem.  I was really close.

God sees me where I am.

We had a communion service in a corner of the garden before we left; it was simple and powerful.  And we got to keep our little wooden communion cups.

Mine is going to become a Christmas ornament; a yearly reminder of time spent contemplating the  culmination of Jesus' life.

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?

Ruminations on Israel: STRUGGLE

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Monday night we were on a desert oasis; a taste of Bedouin life. We slept in a low hut and had bonfire outside in the evening;  a worship service, and a soul-searching time.  My little declaration was that it was time to leave what is comfortable and familiar; to stop living as though I believed lies I know to be false.  I went to bed pondering that and I woke up before sunrise again; expecting a glorious sight.  I wasn't disappointed in that, but what surprised me were the sounds.  I took a short video, just because that was the only way I could capture the amazing sounds of dawn on the oasis.

You'll want the sound on with the volume up to hear it all.

What sounds like cats is actually the screeching of peacocks.

 The word that I pulled from the pocket of my backpack for the day was 'Struggle'.

And the first major event of the day was...a camel ride.

The struggle was real, y'all.   But I did it.  And if given the opportunity to do it again...I can say, no, thanks, I've already got that t-shirt.  It actually wasn't so terrible, but the saddle irritated some issues in my hip and I'm being honest when I say it hurt a bit.  And I felt sorry for the camels.

The next event of the day was a tour of Masada.  Folks have asked me what my favorite site was; I honestly can't answer that question but I can definitely say I learned the most at Masada.  I only had a vague notion of a battle that happened there...and for some reason I thought it involved the Maccabees.  Wrong, wrong.  It was the last stand of Israel before the Romans, and when Masada fell, Israel was no more...until 1948.   From the plateau, the remains of the siege wall, the siege ramp and the Roman encampments are still visible.  As we toured, I was completely taken with what was the obvious futility of their resistance, along with their determination to maintain their honor and their autonomy.   The struggle was not to defeat Rome; the struggle was to maintain their integrity and their identity even though, short of a miracle, they were doomed.  The miracle did not come, they were not delivered, but they died under their own terms...not the torture, abuse, and enslavement of the Romans.  The synagogue at Masada is one of the places the young modern Israelis, having completed their training for their mandatory military service, take their oaths of loyalty...which, according to our guide, Tisha, includes the declaration that 'Masada shall not fall again!'

The Israeli flag at Masada
The Dead Sea is in the distance

From the struggle of Masada to the struggle at En Gedi...this is a name I knew well from 1 Samuel. 

It is right by the Dead Sea; not far at all, really, from Masada. In fact, there are some with the opinion that 'the stronghold' mentioned in 2 Samuel was, in fact, an encampment on the plateau of Masada.  but it could have been  the cave at En Gedi, as there was a spring there. The cave is closed up now, but Tisha told us that it was a vast cave and could easily have held 300 or so men...which was David's fighting force.  It was the place that David cut a bit of Saul's robe off while Saul was ...occupied...in the cave.

We were not able to go up to the cave; the tourist business was booming that day and there was a long line of folks ...and it was HOT.  So we went to an overlook instead.   This is the picture taken with the disposable camera for the day...and it makes the spring look farther away from us than it actually was. I could easily imagine David standing there, waiving his bit of fabric,   hollering to Saul that he had no intention of harming him.  David was conscience stricken just from cutting a piece of this clothing.

The last desert stop was, once more, just a short trip up the road to Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found  The verse that came to my  mind there was It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.  (Prov. 25:2, NIV 84).  The story of the Dead Sea Scrolls is amazing; no one knows where the scrolls came from or who put them in the caves, or why.  There are several theories.  But the truth is that Qumran...the Dead Sea area...is about the only place on earth the scrolls could  have been left 2000 years ago and still be even somewhat intact today.   And what we have is amazing...copies of the Scriptures from the time of Jesus, proving that the scripture that He read is fundamentally the same...and 'fundamentally' meaning only rare and minor spelling variations...as the texts that we have today.

Cave 4 at Qumran, where by far the most manuscripts

and fragments have been found.

As we returned to the bus for the ride across the mountains, I pondered what I had seen that day in light of the word 'Struggle'...and what  occurred to me the most was the concept of honor in the struggle.  The Judeans at Masada, David at En Gedi, and the mysterious folks who went to such trouble to hide so many manuscripts to keep them from falling into unscrupulous hands and being lost.  The story of Masada that now inspires a nation, the determination of David to never lay a hand on the Lord's anointed one, and the execution of the plan that preserved for us confirmation of our scriptures.  Struggle has a purpose...even if we don't see it for years and years...and years.

Maybe even riding a stubborn camel has its purpose...such as training to leave the comfort zone.

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.

Spring Semester finished!

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Springtime sight: Dogwood blossoms against the new leaves on the Japanese Maple

 

Of the ten or so folks who started the Bible Study for Beginners class back in February, 3 were still there on the last class.  Which is about par for the course for these kinds of things.  It was a good first go at Wednesday nights studies...we were setting records for Wednesday night attendance...until we went to Daylight Savings Time and the days got warm, lol.   Plus, we had two weeks in which we didn't have classes...not back-to-back, but almost, due to other events on the church calendar.  It's funny how many folks didn't make it back after that breaky bit.

But I enjoyed the class; it's so refreshing to introduce folks to the scripture and see the lightbulbs go on as they realize that they CAN sit down with a Bible, a pen and a notebook and the right attitude and actually get a personal revelation.  I don't know how many times I've studied...even taught...the book we were using as the basis for the studies, Ephesians, and I still saw stuff in there I'd never noticed before.

God's word really IS living and active...and it WILL divide soul and spirit, if you give it the chance.

I have three Fridays left now before I head to Israel.  I'd like to do some preparation studying...maybe spend some more time in the Psalms...before I go.

I may or may not unearth/ make connections on anything blog-worthy...we'll see.

Meantime, I'm trying to figure out how light I can pack.  I have two sizes of suitcases...probably too small and way bigger than I need.  I really don't want to take the big one.
Decisions, decisions, lol...

Oh, the Poor Neglected Beer Blog....

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi



I have thought often of posting in the past...month, gulp...but I have so many irons in the fire at the moment that I just couldn't capture the thoughts at the moment.

So I thought I'd give you a little update on something that started well over a year ago...

I am going to Israel at the end of next month.

Can I just pause a moment and let that sink in?  It just doesn't...compute....

It's another DIVE trip.  I went to the DIVE School back in 2014, when I was in a rather limbo spot.  It was an amazing week and was the first time I'd been away from home for that long without really feeling like I'd been gone forever. It went by so fast and I was getting so much poured into me that it felt like it existed outside of time.  And I got encouraged that I had songs to write.

So I came home with a personal challenge...there was a DIVE songwriting conference happening  about a year later, so I told myself if I could come up with one song a month in the next year I could go to that conference.

And I did it.  I had twelve songs on paper by the end of September 2015.  Some were pretty lame...er, needed more work...but there were two or three that I really thought had potential.  I went to the conference, shared the last song I wrote, really badly as 1)it's nearly outside of my vocal ability anyway and 2) it was a cappela and I need help staying in the same key and 3) I'm not accustomed to singing solo.  And the song, which I had such belief in, was judged 'dated'; someone said it sounded like an 80's rock opera.  ONE solitary person said she could imagine Jesus Culture doing it.  So it wasn't entirely shot down, lol, and there was an acknowledgement that there were some good phrases and word pictures in it.  But overall the result was, well, I can't sing good enough to share a song and I don't play an instrument and so, I need help.

I was encouraged to pick a few of the songs...maybe even just one...and share them with some folks on our ministry team at church.  Maybe even purchase some time from one of them in order to get a good critique on the song and some solid help in developing it.

But I'm not after writing songs for the Christian music industry; I wanted to write songs for our house.  What would be the point of investing money in a song that I'm not going to peddle elsewhere?  But I did share some of the songs with folks on our ministry team.

Crickets, y'all.  Crickets.

The songwriting, lacking any kind of demand on it, has kind of faded, although I have written one or two more and have bits and pieces of potential songs in my notebook.

But I was writing this thing on the blog about Transitions...and found myself wandering off into fictionalized versions of the stories.  I edited that out, well edited MOST of it out, of the posts and put it into files on the computer.

Then I started writing a piece about Sarah and Hagar.  I saw it as a two-woman play, with them each relating bits of their story in turn, but the rough story arc took on its own life and I'm not sure I have a play now.

And that's what I was working on in fall of 2017, when Rita announced she would take a tour group to Israel in May 2018.  I watched the promo video and thought, oh, in my dreams... and promptly forgot about it.  About 6 weeks later, in the choir room between services, one of the young ladies who had also been to Dive caught me. 'Are you going with Rita?' she asked.

Well, our head intercessor's first name is also Rita, so my immediate thought was that she was taking a group somewhere...maybe IHOP or something...but I hadn't heard about it.  Seeing my puzzled expression, my young friend added, 'To Israel?'

Oh, yeah.  That.  Ha, ha, I wish.

But it made me think and I came home and watched the promo video again.  And this time, when I watched it, Rita's vision of doing creative things rather than just jumping on the bus to go to the next spot hit me.  What if...I could stand where Abram stood looking over the Jordan Valley when he saw it full of sulpherous  smoke, wondering if Lot made it out alive?  Something jumped inside of me and I thought...this is my trip. And I signed up.

Well, it got postponed from last year to this year...but it's paid off, I have all my plane tickets and...it's going to happen.  The night before I purchased my tickets to get from the Rocket City to our departure point at JFK, I went through my DIVE cards again...the results of the prophetic exercise all DIVE classes do on Sunday.  I had forgotten the details of them, but there was one that had made us all laugh when I got it.

I quipped, 'Oh, maybe that's a date night w/ my hubby at PF Chang's,'  but the young lady that wrote that card caught me later and said, 'No.  I saw feet on the tarmac.  It's a trip.'

So after I booked the tickets I looked to see which continent Israel is considered to be in; the Middle East is 'Intracontinental' and is in Europe, Asia and Africa.  But Israel is considered to be in ...you guessed it...Asia.

So.  I'm going with no agenda, really, except to re-ignight the creative, which has fallen kind of asleep. And this is my prayer, which are the lyrics from the song I sang so badly at the songwriter's conference:

Can these dry bones live?  Can these dry bones live?
It's such a dismal sight -- bones all bleached and white
But the question comes to light, can they live?
Lord you know, Lord you know, Lord you know.

We prophesy to the dry bones, we prophesy to the dry bones
We prophesy, we prophesy, 
'Live, in Jesus' name! Live, in Jesus' name!  Live in Jesus' name!'
 Oh, oh, oh -- oh, oh, oh- oh, oh, oh, oh.

Can these dead dreams breathe?  Can these dead dreams breathe?
The spark has long grown cold, they're all stale and old
We have not been told, can they breathe?
Lord you know, Lord you know, Lord you know.

We prophesy to the dead dreams, We prophesy to the dead dreams
We prophesy, we prophesy, 
'Breathe, in Jesus' name!  Breathe, in Jesus' name!  Breathe, in Jesus' name!'
 Oh, oh, oh -- oh, oh, oh- oh, oh, oh, oh.

Can this mute hope sing?  Can this mute hope sing?
Its voice has long been gone, shutters closed and drawn
Forgotten every song, can it sing? 
Lord you know, Lord you know, Lord you know.

We prophesy to the mute hope, we prophesy to the mute hope
We prophesy, we prophesy,
'Sing, in Jesus' name!  Sing, in Jesus' name!  Sing, in Jesus' name!'
Oh, oh, oh -- oh, oh, oh- oh, oh, oh, oh.

We will live, we will breathe, we will hope in You
With Your life, Your breath, Your song!   (repeat ad lib)

Oh, oh, oh -- oh, oh, oh- oh, oh, oh, oh.