Often I sit down to write a blog and begin to become over-whelmed with everything I want to say, so here’s my best go at condensing some of that.
Israel has been fairly incredible. I have learned so much this month about the history of Israel and the culture. You can’t go anywhere it seems without a place having certain significance, and having something to do with the Old Testament or New Testament.
One thing I have really noticed and for the most part already knew though is that much of Israel is a desert. This comes as a surprise to probably no one, but Israel is also the promise land, the land flowing with milk and honey. I already knew all this but I guess I never really put it together. In the past when I thought milk and honey I automatically went to lush and tropical climate…more Garden of Eden than desert but that’s simply not the case. So I started asking our contact about this, because if you’ll recall he’s a bit of a genius or along those lines. So the first thing I learned is what milk and honey really meant. Milk implies land for grazing in order to milk animals such as goats and cows. And honey, honey is not bee honey but rather honey from dates. If you already know all this forgive my short break through I’m sharing.
So lands for grazing and land suitable for dates (which happen only to grow in limited parts of the world). But here is the duality of the “promise land.” The promise land was indeed promised to Abraham’s decedents and so finally the Israelites, Abraham’s people are stepping into their land. The other part of this is it’s not easy to live in a desert. It’s not easy to grow crops, water can be hard to find, the weather can be fairly scorching, but regardless this is the promise land. So the kicker is it takes faith to live in the desert, it takes God’s promise to provide to survive. The Israelites had been brought to a point where they had to have complete reliance on God. Manna fell from heaven on a daily basis and without this there is no survival. The Lord provided in a very real and literal way and in order to survive in the promise land they must keep that faith.
The Israelites had wondered around in the desert for 40 years not because the promise land wasn’t ready for them, but because they weren’t ready for it. They didn’t know what it meant to rely on the Lord on a daily basis. They had seen the Lord do amazing things in bringing them out of Egypt, but how quickly they lost heart when things got hard.
Being here in Israel really brings to light farming parables that Jesus used. In my part of the world back home we experience droughts sure, but irrigation and technology has come such a way that fresh water is never very far away. I don’t doubt its gets bad but I think it an unequal comparison when you look at the vastness of the desert. The farmer can only do so much, he can plant the seed and be obedient in working the fields diligently but at the end of the day it is not the farmer who makes the seed grow.
I feel largely as if God takes us through a desert, not because promise land isn’t ready for us, but because we aren’t ready for it. We don’t rely on the Lord near enough and perhaps simply couldn’t make it in the promise land. I have trust in the fact the Lord is trying to grow each and everyone one of us. He who can be trusted with little will then be trusted with much. The lord is always preparing me for something and this perhaps has never been truer than now.
Next to Sea of Galilee
Floating in the Dead Sea
