my sabbath

Its Sunday afternoon and I have not stepped off the kibbutz all day but it has been great.  I'm taking today as a sabbath day to relax, read, write and talk with strangers on the kibbutz.  The group traveling around today is going to the same places I went last weekend so I decided to hang out here since I'll be revisiting those sites with dad in a couple weeks anyway.

Today had been amazing. I got up and took a book to breakfast.  Then I made my way down to the sea to sit under a shade awning where I continued reading, journaling, and observing all the tourists who were taking the "Jesus Boat" tour around the lake.  The  boat has this funny ritual and I am becoming quite cultured because of it.  Whenever a new tour group gets on the boat, the crew plays the national anthem of whatever country the group is from as it raises their flag on a pole on the little boat.  I was sitting about 200 yds from the dock they were leaving from so I heard the North Korean, German, American, Hungarian, German again, and French national anthems.  It was a good way to start the morning.  

The last few evenings of "Seaside Philosophy" (by the way, my name caught on and its great) have been really rich.  Thursday evening was the last night for one of the groups who have been on the dig with me.  It started as a small group and grew as the night went on.  The Lord orchestrated an incredible evening discussion that I could not have planned if I wanted to.  Lets just say that it ended with the Gospel and even the drunk friends in the circle seemed sober for a while.  (I can tell you more about that evening in person if you ask but there are too many details to write about).  Oh and then we all sang one more song together very loudly and really never on key, at the request of one of our more hydrated friends. 

Last night it ended up just being me, Justin, and Jordan.  We brought the guitar and a mellon that the boys had taken from a local field.  Apparently they had no idea how to pick out a good mellon because when they handed it to me and I literally felt it squish through the rind, I knew we would not be partaking of any mellon that evening.  Justin served in Iraq for a while and had been to Israel on this same trip before.  Jordan is a political science major from Truman State U and he is on his first trip to Israel as I am.  The three of us talked for about an hour and a half. Some of what we talked about lead me to these conclusions:

Being here makes me feel really small--I love it.  I have met so many people from so many very different walks of life here.  Believers and nonbelievers, nationals and ex-pats, old and young, those who support the palestinians and those who support the Israelis and those who are indifferent, some who have traveled the world and some who have never left their home town (or kibbutz)...the list goes on.  It is absolutely beautiful.  Being in Israel is causing my life to intersect with so many people who I would have never had the privilege of knowing or seeing otherwise.  The diversity of these people adds to my awareness of how small I am.

Standing on top of Megiddo--a place with thousands of years of history and ruins of civilization on top of civilization is such a different experience with history than standing in a 150 year old house at a historic site in the States.  When I look out over the Jezreel Valley, I know I'm being amazed at a view that has amazed people long before Christ walked the earth.  Pulling something out of the earth that has been covered for centuries is an intimate moment with the past.  The history of these places adds to my awareness of how small I am.

And yet, the God of all of these places, the God who wants to be in the lives of all of these people, steps in to love me more intimately than I could ever ask or imagine.  He uses the simplicity of the humble to challenge the proud (I've definitely seen that happen in our group).  He uses the love of those with less to dumbfound the incompleteness of those with much.  It is a beautiful thing.

shrinking,

Haley Kate