November 12
Israel
The above title is a phrase that I have been told many times before. In fact, long before I became a Christian I can remember my mother singing the song “Jesus loves me” while she gave me a bath. The words “Yes, Jesus loves me; Yes, Jesus loves me; Yes, Jesus loves me, for the BIble tells me so” floated through my toddler ears and left an impression on my heart. Today, many years later I still know that He loves me. There have been times along my journey when I have doubted it. Times when I didn’t believe that He could. But as I sit here at a Baptist Church (of all things) in Israel and watch the sun set over the Galilean mountains, I am reminded once again of just how much He loves me. And not just because the BIble tells me so (and it does), but because He delights in me. He delights in showing off for me. The sun is casting a brilliant shade of pink in the sky, lighting up the city a few miles away. The clouds are covering the sun but allowing the beams to permeate and almost touch the houses of the village below it.
Where the beams are touching, that is the city we visited yesterday. We went there to minister to the people in this city and invite them to a Christmas movie that the church is hosting. We packed our bookbags with our lunch and our materials to hand out – the invitation, the 4 Spiritual laws booklet, an excerpt from Purpose Driven Life translated in Arabic, and headed on our way. We put our ipods in and started the walk. It wasn’t long when the novelty of this trek wore off. It was hot and we passed by multiple animal skeltons. By this time, my ear buds had quit working and so I was left to my own thoughts about how we just might join the animal skeletons on the side of the road, being reduced to skeletons ourselves from the hour and a half walk. The city didn’t seem to be getting any closer and the shoulder kept getting smaller. There was one sign that kept my thoughts from sinking:
Although the writing on the sign was a bit foreign, the arches surely weren’t. And just as I stepped over the last animal vertebrae, we made the turn into the city that was fairly western. This city had not only a McDonald’s, but a Burger King and KFC as well. We were pretty excited by the store that had a target symbol on the outside – the colors were a bit different, red and blue instead of the red and white symbol that feels like home. I thought for sure we had reached the “promise land” – McDonalds and Target. The target ended up not being the Target we were used to, but the McDonalds certainly was.
We walked around with great hopes of “ministering” to the people of that city. My hopes quickly became broken dreams as the first invitation I handed out was declined. Not declined because she didn’t want to go, she was really nice and open. She couldn’t read the invitation. It was written in Arabic, she spoke Hebrew. The good news was, I didn’t know either. It was all greek to me! So, with a red face and my tail between my legs and set out for more “ministry.” We found a man that approached us about who we were and why we were here. His name was Mohamed and when I told him I was from America, he got a big smile and said Obama. MIchael Jackson. I just smiled and shook my head, inside thinking how foreigners view our country but the celebrities that reside there. We gave him an invitation, and luckily he could read it. He tried to hand it back and instead of taking it, we gave him the info on becoming a Christian. He took both and I asked if we could pray for his cold, it was very obvious he was sick. We prayed, but with each word he moved further and further away from our hands and kept eyeing the people that were watching him from the road. He walked away shortly after the Amen and I was left to wonder what we were doing here. This ministry opportunity seemed to be failing fast and thoughts of the long walk home almost made me want to cry. An unfruitful ministry day, a western chopping center in the middle of Israel, and a 2 mile trek back home.
We decided we were going to see about the bus. As we were waiting on the bus, and asking questions to those that were waiting too, a car pulled up on the side of the road and the man that got out smiled and waved. It took me a second, but I recognized him from the church service. He said “I will give you a ride.” Those 6 little words changed my day and my heart, because we were going to have to spend our own personal money to take the bus. And as he drove us to the church, he explained how there were two ways to get home from work and He asked God which one to take today. God showed him the road that goes by our village, also the road we were standing on when he saw us. He then went on to explain that he rarely takes that road because of traffic, but he could see that Jesus loves us. He kept saying it over and over again. And with each step that I didn’t have to take, I was reminded of that as well. He loves me, He really loves me. And He used a Arabic 22 year old coming home from work to show that love to me. And I believe that He showed the young man as well. Yes, Jesus loves me.
