A Spiritual Lesson from the Land

Me and my friend Josh. lol

After to talking to several of you back home and noticing comments left on my facebook and such, a lot of you seem to be really enjoying my blog, which makes me very glad.  But as I was rereading through them I noticed a lot of errors in my writing. Sorry about that.  Usually when I write I'm rushed for some reason.  So, for those faithful readers of my blog, I will try harder to commit more time and effort into my writings so that you can enjoy it even more.

This is the start of my third week here according to our calendar.  Here in Israel they use their own Hebrew Calendar.  It is actually based on the moon, not the sun and so the days and months are all messed up compared to our Gregorian Calendar.  So anyway, Its Monday morning, a new day and a new week.  I had another amazing weekend which ended a decent week of class.  I would like to write all about what I'm learning but I don't know how interesting that would be to all of you. Plus maybe I should save all of this wonderful information for when I become a pastor.  ;)
But I will tell you about my field study which we had all day on Saturday.  It was titled "Jerusalem Approaches"  What we did was travel in somewhat of a circle outside of Jerusalem and looked at the different ancient routes or "approaches" that armies would use to get to Jerusalem.  Depending on who you are, this may sound kinda boring, or perhaps very interesting.  But if you think a little more about it, no matter who you are, there is a lot to learn about God from these lessons.  If you ever visit Israel and specifically Jerusalem, you may find yourself wanting to read through the Old Testament straight through.  Every now and then when you hear stories of the people that have come to this land to study the Bible they'll say things like this, "oh it was just incredible being where Jesus was and following his steps" Yeah yeah, its kind of true.  But what has really impacted me is how the OLD Testament has come to life since I've been here. And I've only been here for like 2 weeks!  What started this desire to know more about the Old Testament was my map assignments.  So. You can have a similar experience. Get out your OT and get some maps of ancient Israel. You'll have a blast!  But be very careful.  The more you learn about the promise land, the land flowing with "milk and honey" you'll start to wonder why God chose this land to be the land of His people.  I'm just a young college student in the early stages of my studies, and some of you older folk may know this already, but this land is far from the images we make up in our head of what a promised land should be.  I'll save what I have to say for a sermon one day. lol.  But the main point is this.  In the short time I've been here, I've seen just how much the Israelites really did have to depend on God.  This land, the land flowing with milk and honey, is not a place of economic and agricultural security, or any kind of security. It was surrounded by huge empires to its north and south.  This was very dangerous, fragile land and still is today.  Are you seeing it?  There is only one way to survive in God's promised land, first you must be His chosen people, and you must fully rely on him, which is hard work.  Deut. 11:10 - 13 says it all quite clearly.  This land is cared for by God, and that is the only thing that makes living here possible.  Do you see any logic in this?  God is always operating in a backward sense to the rest of the world... Do you see the illogical work of God in your own life?  If you seem to have been brought into an impossible situation, consider yourself blessed.  God has His eye on you and cares for you.  Put all of your trust in him, obey His commandments, work hard, extremely hard, and you will live abundantly.

I just realized I didn't even really talk much about my field study on Saturday. Sorry about that.  It was a good one too. You know the Christmas Carol "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem"  thats a very appropriate adjective to describe Bethlehem.  And we went up to one of Herod's desert palaces/fortresses, The Herodyan as its called.  That was a significant part of the day.  So i'll just put up some pictures and be done for now.  I'm actually going to make a little separate post about my adventures from Sunday.
If you're reading this, I love you and miss you. Come see me in Estonia for Christmas.

And a lovely view of the "pasturing lands" from atop of the Herodyan. Yes those are pasturing lands, also known as "the valley of the shadow of death"  See my point..you REALLY have to depend on God...

THE HERODYAN! (that volcano looking mound in the distance)

The Garden of Gethsemane. Man! Look how old those olive trees are!...

View of the City from Mt. Scorpus. A good staging place if your interesting in attacking Jerusalem.