The stories come alive!

     Today was our first day away from Jerusalem and it was surprisingly different and in a great way. Leah and I agree that today brought a lot of life to many of the stories in the bible. Jerusalem does this though it is in bits and pieces, covered by a new and extremely busy city. We made it to several different tells (archeological dig sites) that featured popular stories and characters such as Samson, Solomon and his encounter with God where he received wisdom (I for one wanted to spend the night there but the bus was moving on). As we continued on we made stops at Gezer, where there are remains of a fortified city dating to Solomon's time (confirming the Biblical narrative 1 Kings 9:15),we stopped at Jericho which is in Palestinian territory, and ended our trip with a stop in the Judean wilderness where Jesus was tempted.

   Not too bad for one day on a bus huh? There are so many things that I could talk about for a long while, we did after all travel the routes and visited the cities where most of the Old Testament unfolded. Gezer for instance was the front door to the hill country (the majority of Israel), keeping this city was crucial for defending the well being of Israel/Judah. Looking out from Beth Shemesh it was easy to watch Samson catch a fox or wander towards the Philistine Cities, or for the bulls to come carrying the captured ark of the covenant that had been plaguging the Philistines... While Leah was diligently taking notes on a lecture the field director was giving, well, he mentioned at the beginning of his lecture a cistern dating to the earliest Israelite settlements and pointed it out. Our prof said no time for that, but I let Leah take notes and made my way down. I'd say we are an excellent tag team, she takes excellent notes and I have excellent adventures.
     
     Certainly the icing on the cake called today was experiencing the wilderness in the heat of the day. Wondering and imagining Jesus and being awed by His incredible humanity and marveling at his power... what a Great gift we have been given to know that he experienced a far greater temptation than we can imagine and that because of his sacrifice we have been "given the mind of Christ" to overcome. What Good News!