Our Return to Israel - Day 1

Two years ago, my wife and I had the opportunity to travel to Israel with members of the faculty and staff of Holland Christian Schools, under the guiding of Ray Vander Laan (RVL for short). Nothing we have done together has changed our lives more, and this year we had the chance to go again! I'll be blogging my way through the trip, but maybe even in a different way than last time. We'll just have to see.

"Who are you? And what are you doing here?"

Assembling for devotions at the start of Day 1

Those questions framed our first day of hiking (about 9.5 miles worth, according to my Apple Watch). God's story in the Bible answers these questions for us, and it lays out a spectacular invitation for us to participate. It's not a story that happened; rather it's a story that is still happening, and we are meant to be a part of it. That narrative tells of a God who identifies Chaos—disorder, brokenness, hurt—and seeks to bring His order, fullness, and flourishing to all things—what in Hebrew is called Shalom. And in His infinite wisdom, He has called on human partners to participate in that powerful work.

We were spending time in the Shephelah region of Israel. The Shephelah (pronounced "shfay-LAH") is the region of foothills in Israel that bridges the gap between the coastal plain along the Mediterranean and the Judah Mountains further inland. The vast majority of Israel's history in the Old Testament takes place in the Judah Mountains or the Judah Wilderness, but certain tribes of Israel lived in the Shephelah as well. The Coastal Plain was inhabited by Pagan tribes, like the Philistines. So, what's unique about the Shephelah is that it served as a sort of in-between place, a place where the people and things of God would meet the people and things of the world.

We started hiking up to a Tel called Gezer, a strategic location because of its ability to serve as a military choke point along the world's most important trade route of the time, the Via Maris. I say that we hiked up, because Gezer is quite literally, a City on a Hill. You may remember Christ's words in Matthew 5:14, "You are the light of the world, a city on a hill can not be hidden."

We stopped to discuss that passage a bit, and it highlighted on of the primary functions of our trip. There's a difference between the way our Western minds seek to understand the world and the way that's done for Easterners. We prefer abstract truths and philosophical treatises—creeds and doctrines when it comes to theology. Easterners prefer metaphor and concrete ideas to illustrate their beliefs. And since the Bible was originally written in and to an Eastern perspective, it behooves us to put ourselves into that same mindset to understand the full richness of what the Lord has to say to us in His great story.

So, you may heard it preached or taught that a City on a Hill has something to do with being a shining example . . . and that's not necessarily wrong, but it can lead to an incomplete understanding of what Jesus meant. We can begin to think that the City would be envied or admired for all that it had done, earned, or developed; and that might naturally lead to a mindset of protecting that reputation or those achievements from the rest of the world.

But in the ancient near east, which operated largely as groups of city-states, the City provided much hope and care for the poor and marginalized people who lived outside of it—protection during war, food, water, etc. So when Christ tells his followers that they are to be a City on a Hill, he is exhorting them to be hope-bringers to those who need it.

The main gate of Gezer (far side of the sewer ditch)

Up in the ruins of Gezer, we learned about City Gates—the location where so much of this hope-bringing happened. It was in the gates that judges would sit and provide justice; in the gates that the hungry could receive food and provisions; in the gates that the strong defense to military assault took place. We are to be City Gates for others today.

Another short hike took us to a different area of Gezer where we encountered huge stones set up vertically as a type of monument. These particular stones dated to the pagan era of Gezer, but creating these types of displays was something God commanded of his people as well. In Hebrew, one of these stones is called a masseva, and a group of them is called massevot. The idea was that these standing stones would serve as a remembrance of something God had done and that when people would encounter them, they could ask, "What happened here?" and be told the story of God's greatness in return. In the New Testament (1 Peter 2:5), we read that we are to serve as Living Stones today—that in our actions and lives, people would say, "What happened here? What God do you serve that compels you to be this way?" We are called to be standing stones for others, and we were encouraged to think about people in our own lives who have modeled Christ for us.

A standing stone at Gezer

The location of Gezer itself (along the Via Maris) brought up another great point for us. God didn't place the nation of Israel in some far-off, far-removed land where they would never have to interact with anyone else. Instead, he placed them along a trade route that would see 15-25 million people pass along it every year. The Shephelah is "the land between," and God's people have an opportunity and a calling to engage the world for Him.

We are to be city gates and standing stones at the crossroads of the world.

Later in the morning, we traveled to the Valley of Sorek, the place in which the finest vines and grapes were grown. When God refers to his people as a vine, it is the Sorek vine that the Hebrew denotes. On the hills above this valley lived the tribe of Dan, one of the twelve tribes of Israel, and the most famous member of that tribe was Samson.

We dove into the Samson story to discover the ways in which his actions demonstrated a blurry-at-best understanding of his Nazarite calling, but that God used him anyway, flaws and all. A person who would take the vow of being a Nazarite was saying, "I'm All In! I am going to dedicate every fiber of my being to God and pursue His mission for my life with everything I've got."

In Beth Shemesh, a small Tel and current archaeological dig nearby, we learned about the different layers of excavation and what those yielded from Pagan times, the times of the Judges, and the time of King Hezekiah. We learned about the presence of animal bones, namely pig bones, in each of these levels of the dig. In the lowest layer of the dig (the pagan era), there were thousands of pig bones found, but in the layer of the judges (when Israelites controlled that Tel), far fewer pig bones were found—indicating a stronger following of Kosher law. Finally, in the next layer up, from Hezekiah's era, there has yet to be a pig bone found. The point is that our witness to the world is strongest when we are following God wholeheartedly and unwaveringly.

We need to be all-in for God, and no pig bones.

The mill stone of the olive press

After lunch, we added some "puzzle pieces," as RVL likes to call them, that will be good visuals for places later in our trip. We visited an olive press (a gath-shemanim in Hebrew) so that we could understand the process of squeezing out oil from the olives and how that metaphor will apply to Christ's night in the Garden of Gesthemane—something we will study when we are in Jerusalem.

The log and weights are the press itself

We also hiked to a 1st Century Roman-era tomb that would have looked very much like the one in which Christ was laid. We learned about the process of preparing the body for burial, the three-day waiting period before officially declaring someone dead, and the 40 days of mourning that were meant to follow the death of someone you love. All of these visuals and practices will help us understand and appreciate the power of Christ's resurrection—again, something we will study in Jerusalem.

The angel of the Lord came down from heaven, and going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it.

We are to be City Gates and Standing Stones at the crossroads of the world.

When you enter God's mission, you need to be all-in, and no pig bones.

Day 1.