Jet skis on the Sea of Galilee

We have been without Internet for a few days now, I could have paid for it, but I’m too cheap and I didn’t have my thoughts collected. I don’t have Internet now, but I do have some thoughts. I’ll write them down and when we get to Jerusalem later today I’ll post them even if I have to pay.

It is about 4:00 Thursday morning. I have developed this sleep pattern that I can’t seem to break. I will usually fall asleep easily, but only sleep for a few hours, then lay awake for quite a while eventually getting some more sleep. While lying there I think about many things, projects on the farm, things I’ve seen, and what I want to tell you. Well I’ve sorted out some thoughts and can’t seem to get back to sleep so I guess I might as write them out.

When we decided to make Israel part of this trip, it just seemed like a good thing to do because we were going to be in the area. I have always wanted to see what it is like. I guess I also thought that walking the same ground Jesus walked would help me to better understand Him. My prayer on this trip was for God to open my eyes and ears and let me really see. I may be premature in my conclusions because we still have Jerusalem to visit, but I have some very clear examples. I have tried to remain open, I realize that I don’t know all the answers and that I am positive that I am wrong about some things. As I listened to our tour guide, Daphne, she pronounces it daff nuh, I kept getting upset with what I felt were inaccuracies. I spoke up a few times, but D’Linda kept telling me to bite my tongue. The first example was when she said that Jesus was not a wood carpenter, but a stone carpenter. I had to ask her about it, her reasoning was that they build mostly with stone and that they didn’t have much wood around the area of Nazareth. I said that even for the stonework they would have had to have built false work for the arches and scaffolding, and the doors were wood and they did have some furniture. She was pretty confident that she was right though. On the grand scream of things whether Jesus was a carpenter or a mason really doesn’t matter, but the thought of being wrong on something so simple really bothered me. The Bible is the most scrutinized document in the world, why had I never heard this theory before? At almost every stop Daphne would say something that I thought was inaccurate or flat out wrong. I was trying my best to be open to everything, I was surprised that nobody else was speaking up. I didn’t want to reject all she was telling us, but I didn’t want to swallow the camel either. It was really bothering me, I had prayed for open eyes and ears, should I close them?

You know when you are watching a movie and something strange happens and you hear the sound of the needle being drug across the record, well that happened. I went for a jog early Tuesday morning along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. I was looking at the boulder-strewn shore imagining how hard it must have been for Peter and Andrew to land their boat, when the needle went across the record. I came to a yard full of jet skis. All of a sudden I could imagine Jesus walking on the water as jet skis whizzed by. Later in the day we were on the Mount of the Beatitudes, Daphne was telling us that we couldn’t speak in the church that was there, and that after we went through it we should walk alone quietly around the gardens, but the needle was going again, there was a groundskeeper using a bucket truck and a chainsaw to prune some trees nearby. That needle went across the record at the Jordan River. We got there and there were hundreds of people being baptized. They have a dressing room there and you can get a white robe and go into the river and get baptized. The white robes were the kind that once they got wet they were see through, but that wasn’t the needle. The needle was a group of Japanese teenage girls holding their noses, because across the river was a stable and the smell was very pungent. I have to admit it really stunk there, and I don’t mind farm smells.

One saying I had heard in the past kept going through my mind, I don’t remember who said it or even the exact quote, but here is my paraphrase. “Proximity to Holy people or places doesn’t make you Holy any more than standing in a garage makes you a car”. I certainly don’t want to take anything away from the many very sincere people coming here to draw closer to God, but you can be every bit as close to God right where you are, and it might smell better. This place might have some historical significance and interesting ruins to look at, but these old rocks that have been fought over time and again have no special powers. I thought of all the lives that have been lost trying to control this piece of ground. I know that a lot of people believe that this place has significance in prophecy, but don’t they think God can pull it off if he wants to?

30% of the Israeli economy is tourism. Most of that is American Christians. All of the souvenir shops have everything priced in US dollars and if you buy something they even give you change in US $. Would you want to have your leading industry be catering to a religion you don’t believe? That is probably the biggest needle scratch of all. How much more useful could all that money be if we used it to change the world, feed the hungry, heal the sick, set the captives free. Instead we are making people wealthy who think we are misguided fools.

Daphne had said at one point that Ahab was Solomon’s son, I waited until there was no one else around and told her I was sure she was wrong about that, she said she was sure she was right, but would check here Bible later. When she walked away she made a phone call and came back and said that I was right. Later she asked a question about who the Samaritans were, no one spoke up, she looked to me and I answered it. We sat at the same table at lunch and she asked me what I did. I told her I was a carpenter. She said she didn’t believe that, I said that I had been a building contractor. She wanted to know what schooling I had, I told her that I just read some, I’m not sure she believed me. I should have just stuck with the carpenter, she must have something against them.