Israel...are ya comin'?

We're headed to Israel this week. Taking about 30 folks. Some from Idaho, others from around the US.

As I prepare to leave, conversations of various shapes and sizes are popping up. Interested friends and family ask: "Why are you headed there? My God, people can't wait to LEAVE the Middle East...and you're paying to go there??!! "

Yep. Here's why -

Israel is an amazing country. Stepping foot today on the land of antiquity has an almost "too much to believe" feeling to it. Walking the shores, climbing the hills, visiting the remains of cities long-ago prosperous, leaves me with a sense of awe...and of my place in the world, as well. It's not just that "the Holy Land" comes alive (though it does)...it's more that I come alive in the Holy Land. Let me explain.

My faith in Christ is real. I don't NEED to see places like Jerusalem to support my faith. Afterall, the Bible says (in the NT book of Hebrews) that faith " is the evidence of things unseen...".

Instead, I WANT to see Israel...and Egypt. I want to take my family and experience God's refreshing winds of change in an ancient-future culture that means so much to Him...that it ought to mean something "large" to me, as well.

Israel has Gods hand on it. Always has. Always will. My dear friends who see Israel as no more important than, say, Greenland or Mexico, miss the amazing history of a land twice conquered/vacated and twice repopulated/thriving. It is the land of dead men who live throughout time, of monotheism, of saviors and demons, of life and death. It is God's hometown.....

And we yawn, as if to say..."No, this year I think I'll go to L.A. instead for my vacation..." Wow.

Headed to Israel in a few days. Come with us via this blog.

~ Dennis

Comments

[Robin Hanley]

He dreamed. Behold, a stairway set up on the eretz, and the top of it reached to heaven. Behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it.
Behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, "I am the LORD, the God of Avraham your father, and the God of Yitzchak. The land whereon you lie, to you will I give it, and to your seed.
Your seed will be as the dust of the eretz, and you will spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south. In you and in your seed will all the families of the eretz be blessed.
Behold, I am with you, and will keep you, wherever you go, and will bring you again into this land. For I will not leave you, until I have done that which I have spoken of to you."
Ya`akov awakened out of his sleep, and he said, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I didn't know it."
He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."
Dennis,
the trick is to pay attention to what is going on around us long enough to behold the miracles. To be awake and present "In this place" is to encounter God.
can't wait to hear from you!