Every once in awhile an album comes along that becomes the soundtrack of a season of life. The music, the lyrics and the atmosphere match your thoughts, feelings and emotions perfectly. Later on as you reflect on this season, the songs cue as if they were designed specifically to bring pictures and words to your mind’s eye. The memories and music are irrevocably intertwined. You are marked forever by music that changes your life.
Tag Archive - Israel
Beauty Is What Remains
Reflections on Israel (Pt.3)
We always speak of the wilderness as a time of dryness or distance from God. It is a time in our life that we know will come, but we always pray to be released from it as quickly as possible. While you’re in it, all you can think about it getting out.
“The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus;
it shall blossom abundantly
and rejoice with joy and singing.”Isaiah 35:1-2
The wilderness...shall be glad
I didn’t realize the extent of mine until coming back from Israel, but I was in a wilderness season myself. As we departed for the trip, I knew I was in a rough place spiritually for a lot of reasons. A lot of dreams in my heart seemed unfulfilled, I decided to step down for awhile from my leadership position in the home fellowships of my church, I was having discontentment in my job, I had been praying for that someone special to come after 3 years of being single; you get the picture.
Then we went to the desert. As we traveled through this barren land I experienced a real desert for the first time; no trees, no water, no nothing for miles on end. Then out of nowhere, we came upon an oasis. Springs that come out of the desert with fresh water, plants, trees and fruit. It was such a stark contrast to the barrenness of everything else.
Our tour guide asked us a question. “Why do you think God led Abram into the desert?” Now if you look back in Genesis, you will see that Abram was well off. He had a large family, cattle, food and he lived in a beautiful land. Then the Lord leads him away from all that. His response was, “Because in the desert, he would be completely dependent on God”. Then something just clicked for me.
I realized that every time I go through a season of wilderness is when I am trusting God the least. I find that this is God in His mercy stripping away everything that I’m trying to do for myself and saying, “Trust me”. Then as I go through it, out of nowhere I will see an oasis spring up. Because I’m in the middle of nowhere, I know that it can only be the Lord. I take absolutely no credit and He gets all the glory.
The Lord will keep us in the wilderness as long as it takes to get us to stop striving in our own strength and depend on Him. I’m reading “Sit Walk Stand” by Watchman Nee and he relates this to a man that is drowning. When he begins drowning, he is terrified and flailing his arms. If you try to rescue him in that state, he will pull you down with him. The Lord in His mercy waits for us to stop flailing and when all our strength is expended, He rescues us.
I feel like I am finally learning what it means to take His yoke and find rest (Matt 11:29). It’s not this heavy burden that take for myself. It’s not something that I need to strive for constantly. I’m learning how to trust and to rest in Him. It sounds so simple but until it clicks for you, words can’t do justice to the fullness of this promise.
There is beauty in the wilderness. Witnessing it first hand, I believe it.
Reflections On Israel (Pt.2)
Our tour guide Salo told us that Jews have a saying when they return to live in Israel:
“I have come to build and to be rebuilt”
I found this statement absolutely profound. It made me ask myself, “Have I come to build or do I just focus on being rebuilt?”
First, A Little History
I have come to build and be rebuilt
There are a multitude of scriptures pointing to the restoration and return of a remnant to Israel (e.g. Is. 10:21-22; 11:11-12; 14:1). As you can see I’ve been reading a lot of Isaiah lately! In the early 1800s “Zionism” was founded as a political movement dedicated to the creation of a Jewish state. With a number of snowballing circumstances over the course of the next 100+ years, concluding with a year-long war with the Palestinian Arabs, Israel declared their independence in 1948.
Since establishing their independence, Jews have been immigrating to Israel in droves. Immigration to Israel is referred to as aliyah (literally, ascension). Under Israel’s Law of Return, any Jew who has not renounced the Jewish faith (by converting to another religion) can automatically become an Israeli citizen.
As they have returned, the Jews have undergone the process of rebuilding their land. The Jewish National Fund is an organization that is involved in the reforestation of the land (over 240 million trees planted), creating sustainable agriculture, soil conservation and solving the water crisis by creative means.
At the same time, many Jews who return to their homeland are being healed of the scars of the past. I visited a Holocaust museum in Israel which was a powerful demonstration of not only the brutality and atrocious acts unleashed on the Jews, but also the resilience and hope of a people that were not exterminated by hatred and evil. Many have suffered from feelings of anti-Semitism and the return to their homeland provides a refuge and a sense of pride and belonging.
Am I Building?
All this made me reflect on my own life and begs the question “Am I building?” Much of Western Christianity revolves around accepting Jesus Christ as savior and getting your pass to heaven. Everything else is just done in anticipation of that day. We go along with our lives and manage to fit God in there along the way. There is a huge focus on having our lives rebuilt but not so much of a focus on building anything here that lasts.
I realized that its time for me to start building. I want to see transformation not just in my life, but in lives of those around me. I want to see my community changed. I want to see Jesus break into South Florida. I want to build something that lasts.
I love how Bethel Church in Redding, CA says that they want their city to be a cancer-free zone. That’s what it means to build for the kingdom. I want to see Jesus’ prayer of “on earth as it is in heaven” fulfilled.
God is doing a work in the hearts of Jews and he is preparing a remnant for His return. He is using the Gentiles to provoke them to jealousy (Rom. 11:11). I want to use their motto and let the Lord not just rebuild me, but to use me to build His kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven.
Reflections On Israel (Pt.1)
Okay familee, we go!
We are familee!!
As I reflect back on my trip to Israel I think about how perfectly God crafted our group. While I couldn’t see it in the beginning, God was forming a group of people that would become tightly knit, like-minded, and forever changed by an amazing journey.
I remember the very first meeting before the trip and as I looked at the people that would be coming I thought, wow this is quite a random group. Honestly, I wasn’t sure that we would all mesh.
I counted a total of 4 people that I had spent time with outside of church. The rest I had either only seen in passing, had brief conversations with or I didn’t know at all. Our group comprised of singles, married couples, old(er) and young people. It was a pretty diverse assemblage.
In our final meeting before leaving, we met together at the house of my pastor. It was there that something changed. Although most of us had not spent much time together, I could already see the connections beginning to form. As we entered into a time of worship at the house, I realized that I was with a group that was totally committed to worshipping Jesus. That’s when I realized that this was probably going to be good. Little did I know how good it would be!
As we arrived at the airport and began our long journey to the Holy Land, our team had already begun to gel. Rarely did a moment pass when we weren’t either talking about how awesome God is or laughing out loud at something silly. Even after being cramped into coach seats for 12 hours, we arrived in Israel in great spirits…though a bit jet lagged.
The next gift was our amazing tour guide. I remember the first thing that he said to us was, “My name is Salo and for the next days, you will be my family”. How true that came to be! God blessed us with an amazing man that was completely in tune with the spirit of our team. His parents were raised in Poland and they emigrated to Venezuela when he was a boy. He was raised there and Spanish is his mother tongue so understandably we were a little baffled when our Jewish tour guide spoke to us in a heavy Spanish accent!
Over the course of the next 11 days, he led us on a prophetic journey through the wilderness of the Negev, the hustle and bustle of Jerusalem and the peace of Galilee. All the while, he brought the Bible alive through his narrative. Along the way he let the Spirit lead him to where we should sing or pray or just sit and meditate. It would go something like, “Maybe here…a few of us pray” or “Katherine, maybe you make a song.” Then as we left a site, he would inevitably say “Okay familee, we go!” It was awesome!
As the trip was drawing to a close, I felt such an intense connection with the entire team. There were 24 of us total. It makes me think of a phrase that A.W. Tozer used, “Fellowship of the Burning Hearts”. That’s truly what we were. Everywhere we went, we exalted Jesus. We were all invariably linked by our passion for worshipping the King!
Before I left for the trip, I remember thinking to myself that I wished this person or that person would be on the trip and how much more fun or profound it would be with people I knew more intimately. In retrospect, I couldn’t have selected a more perfect group of people to share one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life.
I am forever changed and I come back with new perspective and more importantly…new familee!