The Eternal

There are heavy pressures in church leadership. I imagine other sorts of leadership carry the same sorts of pressures. Pressure to lead with passion. Pressure to have vision. Pressure to present strategy. Pressure to be relevant. Pressure to make people happy. Pressure to be in tune with God for a whole community of people. Pressure to live up to expectations. Pressure to read the right books. I could go on.

Some of these "pressures" are good. But as I prepare to lead the incredible little community called NC3, I have found myself drawn away from those pressures. My eyes have drifted to the eternal. Everything in me that has been taught how be an "effective" pastor is squirming, but my heart is drawn to lead by being in tune with history, overwhelmingly dependant on Scripture for guidance, and lost for hours in prayer every day.

In a world that is so connected, with information so accessible, with my friends in Israel and New Zealand only an email away, with philosophers declaring a new era (called "postmodernism"), the pressure is to try to follow all the trends, understand all the media, and develop language that somehow speaks all the dialects. But these pressures are ethereal, and the results of such journeys will blow away in a strong wind. What will remain is the eternal.

How can you step outside all your pressures today and grab hold of the eternal?

E-L-B-I-B...

...that spells Bible, backwards.

Here's a quick thought about being backwards with the Bible: It seems to me that often we want the Bible to tell us about the stuff we think is important, so we mine it for word studies and instances in which that topic comes up. Instead, if we started with the Bible, we might discover (slowly, with much patience) those things the Bible thinks are important. We can go into greater and greater depth with that when we then go into word studies and the like. But it’s time to let the Bible speak for itself and respond charismatically, rather than speaking charismatically and responding biblically.

So how do we start to correct this? By ingesting the Bible in large doses. We should do it alone (individually), and in groups (corporately). Two of the recent authors I've read (Dietrich Bonhoeffer and NT Wright) both suggest that a key to a healthy church gathering is having the Bible read aloud in large portions. Wright suggests that at least three whole chapters get read, one Old Testament, one New Testament, and one Psalm.

As a pastor, I find the suggestion, well, convicting. How many churches do this? Perhaps in more liturgical settings it is much more common. But in the non-liturgical settings, it is time, with all the other voices we listen to, to let God speak through the one place we can always be sure it's HIM speaking, and allow our agenda to be shaped accordingly.

A Diversion for Prothero

I need to diverge from the Israel blog series for a couple reasons. One, it is taking me so long to get back to writing about each day that I am suppressing other important thoughts and messages, and two, I am in the midst of an important thought and message, which is the content of this blog. I have every intention of returning to the Israel blog in at least two more insertions, both having to do with my experience in Jerusalem and having been very formative for me ever since, but those will have to wait.

This evening, I attended a lecture by a newly-renowned professor named Stephen Prothero. He is the chair of the Religious Studies department at Boston University, and has written several books that look very intriguing to me, the most intriguing being American Jesus. That book explores the various persona Americans have fit Jesus into. Nonetheless, it was not the topic of his lecture, nor is it the topic of this blog.

The topic of his lecture was his newest book, which I purchased about an hour before the lecture and thumbed through in hopes of getting a feel for his thought before I attended (at this time I feel I did so rather successfully, but I will read the book in full soon), entitled Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—and Doesn’t. In it, he makes a rather astute observation: Americans are at once very religious (a vast majority claim to believe in God), and yet at the same time very religiously illiterate, both about the religions we claim to be connected to and the other major religions of the world. This, he argues, is a big problem, especially when the most important issues of our day (abortion, stem-cell research, poverty, gay-marriage, etc.) are being discussed by the decision makers in ways peppered with religious—particularly Christian—language. To be fair, he never said this is a problem in and of itself, just that it is commonplace.

Of course, the problem with the two realities (that is, thoroughgoing religious illiteracy and regular usage of "religious rhetoric") is that if they are both true, then hardly anyone has any idea how to engage the arguments that are being made—including the politicians making them. Beyond that, Prothero pointed out that the vast majority of the world operates in religiously charged manners, and religious motivations are far more prevalent than we realize (such as the underlying conflict between Sunnis and Shiites that seemed to "appear" after we established a strong military presence in Iraq).

His premise thus far is a healthy one, in my estimation: religious illiteracy is a problem. That goes for me and my fellow evangelicals as much as it does for the religiously post-modernist in your nearest coffee bar. But his methodology—that is, his way of approaching the problem—is fundamentally flawed. You see, Dr. Prothero claims a very distinct difference between theologians and religious scholars. One, he claims, practices and espouses a certain religion, while trying to understand it—it is more of a direct connection to God. The other simply studies the people of various religions, examining what they believe.

This seems basically okay, until we begin to draw the implications of it out. What Prothero has done is follow the humanistic line that has been unconsciously drawn across all of Western culture: we have decided that we are able, somehow, to categorize the sacred and the secular apart from one another. In other words, we have drawn a line between "religion" and "public life." Regularly throughout the lecture, he differentiated between what might be "religious" concerns and his own, seemingly more noble and even-minded "civic" concerns. From his standpoint, those Politicians who spout biblical analogies to support their agenda are simply using religious rhetoric to court the masses. While this certainly happens on a large scale on both the "left" and the "right" of the political spectrum, it is going too far to assume that religion is only being used as a tool.

In short, Prothero does not have a category for dealing with a reality behind every religious discussion: the category of truth. In fact, every major world religion is a description of reality—the whole scope of reality (this is called a "worldview"). So anyone who faithfully understands his or her religion is committing a crime against it when attempting to separate out some ethical or political issue from that realm of belief. Morals, virtues, ethics, our sense of Justice and character—these all come from somewhere (or, more accurately, from someOne). The line cannot exist if one of these worldviews is true.

It seems, however, that Prothero is willing to eat his own dogfood. In his introduction to both the lecture and his book, he tells the story of a colleague from Europe who noticed a stark difference between American and European students. American students are very religious—many of them faithfully attend church, and yet are radically religiously illiterate. European students are just the opposite—they are very religiously literate, but the vast majority would never consider stepping foot in a religious institution, especially a Christian church. That sparked the book Prothero wrote, and in it he presents a plan to help raise religious literacy.

I couldn’t resist, during question-and-answer time, to ask him if he thought his proposed solution, if applied on a broad scale, would lead to an irreligious people who are knowledgeable about religions, just like European students. He first spoke about how he usually avoids this question, but since he had consumed a few glasses of wine before the lecture, he was willing to answer it tonight: the short answer is… yes. His primary reason for that is the widespread reality, which I regrettably admit, of anti-intellectualism amongst the Evangelical majority. The way the faith is presented in many circles discourages thinking, never once stopping to recognize that Jesus called us to love the Lord our God with all our mind, too.

His answer is both a critique of his premise (the supposed divide between the religious realm and the secular realm) and a critique of the church. If God did create this world, then the most fundamental realities within it will ultimately reflect his glory. Why are we not willing to sharpen our minds, engage our culture, and show them the God who creates and redeems, who is Lord of the universe? To quote the professor whose passions helped sow the thoughts behind this blog, Douglas Groothuis (see "The Constructive Curmudgeon," a link on the right): "Anti-intellectualism is a cruel pox on the face of evangelicalism. It must be removed through teaching, preaching, writing, and living in a way that the truth is rationally and passionately presented." Amen. It’s time to attend more lectures like these with courage, humility, and confidence in the truth. If the Holy Spirit promises to give us the words we need before the world (see Matthew 10:19-20), why are we afraid to go before the judges?

[If you've read through this and find yourself totally lost, wondering what on earth I'm trying to say, I heartily recommend two books that say it much more clearly than I do. The first is called The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer. This is a must read, in my opinion. The second is by a student of Schaeffer's and is an excellent read, as well. It is called Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey. These works show thoroughly how the "line" between "religious" and "secular" has been drawn, and how it colors the world we are taught to see. Read them thoughtfully: no matter what you do, they will impact your life for the better.]

The Israel Experience, Part 4: A baptist and a scholar?

After two nights on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, which sits at nearly 600 feet below Sea-Level, our tour turned southward. We would follow the flow of the Jordan River, which travels from north to south, out of the very low Sea of Galilee and into the lowest land on the planet: the Dead Sea. The day’s journey is slated to end in another Israeli resort on that southern sea’s shores.


It is the Jordan River that the Israelites crossed to enter the Promised Land I now tour. It was in the Jordan River that John the Baptist stood as he called Israelites to repent and turn back to God’s ways of justice, love, mercy, and peace. It was John to whom Jesus came to officially start his ministry.


Baptism, I learned, is a Jewish ritual at heart. To purify themselves, the Jews would walk into a pool of water (they constructed these regularly, if you see one you can act smart: it’s called a mikvah), fully submerge themselves in it, and arise with the sin symbolically washed from their bodies. John (and others like him) took this ritual into the slow moving waters of the Jordan. Because Jesus did it to start his ministry, many Christians now count baptism in the Jordan as a key part of the pilgrimage back to this holy land.


I, on the other hand, was baptized in the exotic Cherry Knolls swimming pool in 2002. That water had the exact same effect as the water flowing through the Jordan, and God made that clear to me before I arrived. The work of Christ had been accomplished in me. With that in one hand and my "profession" as a Pastor in the other, I found myself in a very honored position at the Jordan: I baptized three people! For me, this felt a key part of my own pilgrimage. In some of the holiest moments of my life, God has called me to serve as a mediator, a priest, so others can enter his presence. The role is a priceless gift.



So there I stood with two other pastors and a willing traveler, and we took turns submerging people in the authority of the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. It was a holy moment indeed. All the while, little fish swam around my feet, periodically nibbling on my skin. It didn’t hurt, and no one there knew it. But I am now aware of a new capability I have to submerge (hmmm, that’s what the word "baptism" means) my own panic… I think I prefer swimming pools, for next time.




We journeyed on. The land outside the bus went from green to brown to the yellow-brown of desert sand. The rolling hills of Galilee became sharp mountains. The air grew hotter. Our bus took a turn up a steep hill, and we pulled into a parking lot at the base of a site called Qumran. From the edge of the hills, we could see the bright blue, green, and white of the Dead Sea. With our backs to it, the well preserved ruins of the Essenes, a Jewish sect full of devoted scribes who—out of devotion to God—separated from society to await the messiah. When their caves were discovered in 1947, scholars came upon what we now can recognize as the miraculous provision of God: the manuscripts of the Old Testament match those found all over the Middle East and North Africa to the 99th percentile. In other words, they presented the best proof we have that the scriptures are genuine, not made up for political gain.


Mickey lamented that most people dislike the visit to Qumran. It is hot. It isn’t in the Bible. But it shows the devotion of the Jewish people and the hand of God to preserve his scriptures: it must not be poo-pooed! If I was ever glad to be something of a "scholar" on this trip, it was here. I found myself thanking God for the many excellent OT professors I’ve had: Drs. Nelson, Longman, and Hess especially. In the picture, I'm standing across a canyon from "Cave 4," where hundreds of fragments were found, especially a huge scroll with most of Isaiah written on it.




Late that night, hot and sticky from the many desert sites we walked around, we pulled into a luxury resort that overlooked the Dead Sea. This body of water has in it 10 times the salt concentration of the major oceans. Therefore, nothing can live in it. Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Revelation (to name a few) speak of the days of culmination, when the Messiah will return (that is when Jesus will return) and a spring will burst forth from the Temple in Jerusalem and flow into the Dead Sea, turning it to fresh water. What is now dead will begin to teem with life.

Until then, swimming in the Dead Sea is one of the strangest physical experiences imaginable: the salt is so concentrated that the water is more condensed than human flesh. In other words, when I leaned back in the hot water (at 11pm), I floated. So did everyone else. For the first time since 4am on the first day, I felt like I really was on another planet.


Fantasy becomes reality: while I floated, a tiny drop lept happily from the calm surface of the water into my eye, and I was back to earth. Just try it: pour an entire salt-shaker into a glass of warm water, mix it up, and drop a tiny bit in your eye. OR, don’t, and just take my word for it: O MY DEAR MERCY, DOES THAT EVER HURT. So much for submerging my panic. And thank God for people with foresight, who installed fresh-water showers right there on the beach, so visitors don’t go blind. Cue another realization that I’m traveling alone: no one to laugh at me, no one to help. Just a wet, salty American stumbling quickly with one eye tightly shut across a rocky beach in the dark. How nice.

The Israel Experience, Part 3: An Hour for Three Years

Mid morning, day three: In the first week of August, it’s hot in Israel. Everywhere we went, our little herd huddled under the shade of trees, buildings, even ruins. We used ruins for shade.

Today, we’re sitting on a collection of stone blocks under a smartly planted bundle of trees. To my left, a fence keeping the traveling entitled off of first century artifacts. I see the tops of columns and pieces of building archways. I scan back to Mickey. He’s holding his finger in his Bible, standing in front of us. His finger is in one of the gospels—I love Luke and have given much of my life to his gospel, so I’ll just choose to "remember" that Mickey was reading out of Luke.

In Luke 5, Jesus walks into a synagogue to teach, and a man possessed by a Demon begins to yell at him. With simple yet stern words, Jesus casts the demon out, and the people are amazed. I look to my right at a large wall. From the ground to about 3 feet up, it is black. Above that, the stones are white. My vision focuses as Mickey continues to speak. This is that synagogue. And the black stones at the base are the same stones that stood when Jesus sat in this place day in and day out to teach.

This is Capernaum.

It seems small to people like me, this town. The Roman Catholic Church owns half the land, the Orthodox Church owns the other half. The synagogue sits in the Roman Catholic side. It is a large synagogue; Luke 7 explains why.

Of course, our bus had pulled up alongside two other tour-buses. Despite the large number of people walking the streets of this town that covered no more than an acre or so, it was quiet. I saw many "holy sites" in Israel. Capernaum stirred my soul unlike any other.

Jesus was only in Jerusalem for a week. He stayed in or around Capernaum for nearly 3 years. I was in Jerusalem for 4 days. I stayed in Capernaum for an hour or less. The quiet of it, the reality of Jesus’ footprint on it… Somehow, though my mind has returned to the rhythms before me in Colorado, my heart is still lingering in Capernaum.

Mickey finished his brief lecture and we were released to explore. I felt I couldn’t walk quickly. I sauntered to the back wall, outside the synagogue. My spirit trembled within me. I turned my back to it and looked at the rolling hills just outside the town wall (cue the verses that say "Jesus went to a mountainside to pray."), this is what he saw every day. Everything in me wanted time to move slowly so that I could enjoy this spiritual meal. But it wouldn’t (thank God for blogs, where the passage of time is paint on my brush, eh?), so I rounded the synagogue and walked in.

There was much of this day that moved me. That moment in the synagogue, the place Jesus taught the men and women of Capernaum every day, has left a stretch mark on my soul. Its walls were tall and white, much larger than I imagined any 1st century synagogue. Perhaps the stones at the base could still remember his confident voice addressing the crowd, "The kingdom of God is like…" and the people go silent. "When this Rabbi speaks, things happen," they whisper to one another. "Did you hear he healed Peter’s mother with a word?" "Yes, right over there, where she was dying in his home!" More of the crowd gathers. "That’s nothing," a bold retort: "The Centurion who built this synagogue had a dying servant. Jesus healed him without ever stepping foot in that Gentile’s unclean home." And from multiple people at once: "Who is this?"

By now I’ve wandered to the place they say Peter’s home was. A chapel is built on top of it, with a glass floor to see the remains of Peter’s walls. Chapels and churches are on top of every potentially significant site. Like Peter himself, we want to build stone alters where organic life happened. I can’t take it in fast enough.

I lift my eyes and notice all the people slowly walking these streets, like me. None of them are in my group. Without another glance at the place Jesus spent more time than any other, I hurry back to the purple bus, frowning at this downside of tours.

The day to follow fed my soul, though breakfast was best. We never went far, but instead visited all the towns and significant areas that surround the Sea of Galilee. To finish, we climb in a wooden boat on one side of the large lake and sail across. I furrow my brow as the crew raises an American flag—not quite the view Jesus would have had, but nonetheless. I look out at the little towns in the haze, and then down at the smooth water. Thanks to Luke (and his three fellow Evangelists), and thanks to this trip, I’ve heard Jesus speak in Capernaum.

Now I squint across the waters he calmed with a word, the waters upon which he walked. Now they—and my soul within me—are quiet as the mid morning

Israel Experience, Part 2: Mickey and a Big Purple Bus

I couldn’t have planned my first morning in Israel any better. When I tried to go to bed at about 10:30 the night before, it was 1:30pm in Denver. My body wasn’t sure what I was trying to make it do. Thank God for sleeping pills, eh? Anyway, the next morning, when I woke up before sunrise, I was ready to go. I milled around my tiny room, journaled, did pushups, and hoped the coffee would be tasty at breakfast. And I looked out my window a lot, anxious to see what this foreign world looked like. In science fiction, sometimes the sky in other dimensions is a different color…maybe I expected the same thing. The sun came up gently. It was blue. The sky, the Mediterranean, the roads. I could look up the coast at downtown Tel Aviv. I opened my window and took as many big swallows of fresh Israel air as I could.

I needn’t say much about breakfast except this: one of my biggest fears going into the trip (if I’m to be honest here) was that I would not be able to maintain my pathetic coffee addiction. When I walked into the dining room to find little ketchup-looking packets with "Instant Arabic Coffee" in them, my heart sank. It seemed not all my fears were unfounded (so I don’t have to keep this plot-line going, I’ll just say now that it was merely this particular hotel with crappy coffee. You all can rest easy).

I walked outside with my bag to find several giant tour buses. In the windshield of the most gaudy one was placed a placard that read "Pilgrim Best of Israel Tour." When I say "gaudy," I mean… well, take a look at the picture. The travel books I had purchased before the trip recommended trying to blend in… if we were aiming to be inconspicuous, we missed. The noisy color of the bus was a let-down, but it was tempered by the short, round faced man with glasses who approached me as I stared at it. "You must be Michael!" He smiled and offered his hand. "Yes…" I muttered as I examined him. "I’m Mickey. I’ll be your guide. Welcome to Israel." Nothing about Mickey was "commercial" (another one of my fears). He looked like a MA Biblical Studies student, like someone who might enjoy a numerical comparison between Peter and Paul’s usage of first personal pronouns, and the like. I was instantly thrilled.

Behind the wheel of our "loud" bus sat a well dressed, large, dark Israeli man with big black sunglasses. He looked like he had just rolled off the set of a major motion action movie. His name was Yossi. He turned out to be a master at driving that big, fancy tour-bus. I rarely noticed him for how well he was doing. Part of that was because I was so taken with Mickey.
We climbed into the bus. I had spent significant time praying that I would have a grateful attitude and exceeding patience with my tour group. God was gracious: and so were they. There were about 30 of us, aged 14 to 79. The youngest and the oldest were brought along by their baby-boomer parents or children…and yes, I was surrounded by boomers, with a few X-ers and maybe 3 millenials. If you don’t know these titles for different generations, don’t worry about it. I’ve digressed.

So, the bus. Right when we started, Mickey’s voice came over the loudspeaker. His English was easy to understand, clear, even "marvelous," but he also had an accent that was slightly Russian and slightly Yiddish. I later came to learn that he was a Russian Jew who moved to Israel when he was 17 out of his Jewish fervor, only to find Christ through an Anglican friend once he got here. Mickey deserves a whole entry, but since he flavored almost every event to follow, I had to introduce him here. Front to back, he was an incredible guide: very knowledgeable, very careful not to step on theological or political toes (it was an evangelical tour, by the way), and very good at holding our attention. If ever you are planning to take a tour in Israel, I highly recommend Mickey. Send a comment, and I’ll give you his contact info.

He first took us to Caesarea. This was a Roman city, later controlled by Crusaders, now a site of historical ruins. It sits on the beach of the Mediterranean, had a track for Chariot Races (Ben Hur, anyone?), had rooms underground where the wild animals would be kept…which were used for Gladiatorial games. I loved the movie Gladiator, but when Mickey straightforwardly and rightly criticized that form of "entertainment" (referring to real gladiatorial matches), I knew I would be enriched and challenged. We looked at a stone found here with Pontius Pilate’s name carved in it. Evidence of Biblical accuracy, before my eyes.

Back in the bus, we continued on. I began to recognize that everywhere I looked was history thousands of years older than anything I’ve ever known in the States. We drove past a tomb on the side of the road, in passing, Mickey explained that it is probably 1900 years old, at least. Our bus climbed a mountain, to a monastery. "Welcome to Mt. Carmel." Here we were, on top of the mountain where Elijah had a standoff with the prophets of Baal. A huge statue of Elijah swinging a sword marked the territory. We climbed the stairs to a platform and looked out upon a breathtaking valley. It’s name is Jezreel. The book of Revelation calls it "Armageddon." Dozens of major, history changing battles have already been fought here…as recently as 1948. As Mickey taught and we gazed, fighter planes screeched overhead, a reminder that this land is still in great tension, and will be until that final battle. It was so green, and so big.

Next it was off to the ancient city Megiddo. The ruins of this city date back to 4000 BC. This city had been built and rebuilt, and it stood on top of a hill. The hill is taller now, because newer parts of the city were built right on top of the rubble from older parts. We could see evidence of the layers—of which there were around 20! This city, on top of this hill, controlled the entire valley of Megiddo (aka, Jezreel; aka, Armageddon) for centuries.

Our last stop for the day was a Palestinian city called (you may have heard of it) Nazareth. Though it is now a tightly packed, modern city, it still has history. We drove to a site where a 1st Century wine-press and threshing floor had been found. The YMCA bought this site, and converted the land around it into a village replica of life in the 1st Century. I expected to be disappointed as we heard about actors and role players…thankfully, they did not distract at all from the scene we saw. To walk in an area where Jesus most certainly spent his childhood! I rarely spoke; speaking would have slowed my intake of this scene.

As we drove away, I couldn’t help but to smile and gaze out the window. My day had begun with fantasies about a world where nothing was the same as my home, not even the sky. It was ending with a pleasant ride northward, through streets I had never seen but somehow seemed familiar. Our bus was headed to one of the most beautiful areas I have ever encountered in all my life: the Sea of Galilee. We would spend our next two nights the shores of the sea upon which Jesus walked, and around which he did the lion’s share of his ministry.

Before dinner I hurried to my room and threw on my bathing suit. I had to get in it. Many have already asked, "did you walk on it?" [Be sure to read that question with a goofy tone] Well, no. I walked into it. The floor of the "sea" (it’s actually a lake) is very rocky, the rocks are very sharp… so I stood knee high in it and didn’t move. If you can picture it, you can picture what it's like to travel alone. You're halfway across the world, in a bathing suit and no shirt, standing still 15 feet out from the beach, saying nothing, trying not to be awkward. In truth, it was so, so good. I just stood, watching the haze rise of the water in the heat, watching the sky begin to turn orange and purple in the sunset. My heart flooded with thankfulness. As I look back on my journal for these days, it is very simple: records of the places I saw, and gratitude. The gratitude remains, and with every passing day back in the norm, it grows.

Israel Experience, part 1: The Arrival

(This is Part 1 of My Israel Experience. Who knows how many "parts" there will be... Enjoy. By the way, I haven't figured out how to add captions to pictures... this first one is a view of Tel Aviv, and my mug, from my first hotel room. Behind the left side of my head? Oh, that's just the Mediterranean Sea [insert schmarmy tone]...)

For most of my life, the whole concept of world travel had been little more than a passing thought. I was content to mill around the small areas I knew well—uncomfortable even when I had to spend a few days alone somewhere "foreign," such as a stint of house-sitting a few miles away or a day’s worth of travel to California. "Uncomfortable" meant I wouldn’t find my routine: coffee at such and such a time, reading at such and such a time, getting about my "to-do’s" in such and such a way, you know. I digress (wow… a digression in the first paragraph? Buckle up).

Throughout my life, I can faintly remember people asking me where I would go if I could go anywhere in the world . I think a few of those questions received the answer "Israel," but for the most part I just made something up. It changed every time: Europe, Africa, New Zealand. Never with any clear intention. So when the perfect storm began to brew—my boss offering to me a two week vacation to decompress from school and my parents offering me a paid trip to anywhere as a way to celebrate finishing school—I had little more than weak ambitions. One of my best friends and I began daydreaming about a trip to Europe or New York. That was in March… I think.

Fast forward to a Thursday morning in late May or early June. I had begun attending a weekly prayer gathering at the church. This particular morning, the presence of God was there in such a way that I was energized to my core. This, I have since discovered, was to become a theme, and an addiction, throughout this adventure. In those times, I begin to understand what "life to the full" means. At any rate, while I drove home from that time of prayer, I continued to commune with God in the car, and a word exploded into my mind: "Jerusalem." It was so loud, so rich, and so right. My spirit lept within me. Of course! What better way to finish Seminary?

A few other things had to fall into place. I needed to go soon. I was still planning on a trip with my dear friend, but surely the cost of such a trip was beyond his means at the time. A couple days later, I went up to see him, convinced after more prayer that he’d tell me that night either 1) he was excited to go to Israel and would make it work, or 2) he realized he wouldn’t be able to do a trip. Right when I got there, he sat down and explained why a two week trip wasn’t feasible. "That’s all right, man. I’m going to Israel." The way the trip itself came together continued to confirm the voice I had heard. The timing of the arrival of my passport, the availability of a spot on a tour, the flexibility of the church to shift the dates I had asked for to be gone… all of it screamed at me: yes, this is right, go!

After that, life sped up. I began to take on more and more responsibility at the church. I’ve been planning on launching a DNA-changing aspect of our church-life, and the planning was being compressed into a small amount of time. By a few days before the trip, I had done precious little to prepare. I hadn’t brushed up on any Hebrew vocab. I hadn’t browsed through any travel books. I didn’t even have the appropriate luggage. My heart-rate sped up for a few days, but all in all, things came together.

I was set to leave on Monday, July 30th. I would arrive in Tel Aviv (which means, roughly, "Old and New") on the evening of the 31st. This was my first international flight, certainly my first flight over an ocean. I flew to Atlanta, where I waited ten hours. In the concourse for international travel I discovered a baby grand piano playing itself. Nice. I walked around a bit, and when I returned, I heard the piano playing a jazz song, "Dancing Cheek to Cheek," with some clever improv. "That’s one crazy electronic piano," I thought. As I drew nearer, I discovered an older man crouched over the keys. A jazz pianist. A legit jazz pianist. I sat and spent the next 4 hours or so lost in his music. What a fabulous way to wait. What a fabulous way to forget my fears. Thoughts of language, safety, group dynamics, and the rest faded into the little-joy of this gentleman’s music.

By the time I boarded, I was given an exit row, where I could stretch my legs. Everyone around me was speaking Hebrew. I dug my Hebrew Phrase Book out of my bag and hid it by my side (for some reason, embarrassed to be caught reading it…why?). What was I in for? I had no clear expectations—perhaps a result of my little to no preparation, perhaps a good place to be. I didn’t know what to pray. "Open my eyes, Lord. Help me to see what you want me to see."
Security seemed minimal to get from the US to Israel (a misleading preparation for my journey home, but that story will come at the end). I stood in a few lines, had to explain my reason for travel to exactly no one. Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv is the most high tech airport I’ve ever seen—it makes DIA look old. My mind spun—I ducked into a bathroom at the baggage claim to put on my money belt. I clung to my satchel in front of me so no pick-pockets could ruin my tour before it started. Apparently, I expected to be greeted by a literal den of robbers in the terminal. First time travel fears.

When I walked out into the Terminal, I wandered for a few minutes through a crowd and then saw a man in a black shirt with dark sunglasses (we were still indoors…) holding a sheet with "Michael Wright" printed on it. I walked up to him, pointed to the sign and then pointed to my chest: did I expect he wouldn’t know English? "I’m Hoffer. We are waiting for one more, so you can go sit at that coffee shop. Just stay in sight." I eased a bit. "Okay." I walked to the coffee shop in the terminal. Everything was written in Hebrew (in my discombobulation, I couldn’t see that everything was also written in English). I knew I needed water, but I walked away, intimidated. A vending machine stood in the corner. It had bottles of water in it, and a slot for a credit card. Perfect. I slid my card, pushed the appropriate button, and nothing happened. I did it again. Again nothing. Apparently, I was doing something wrong, but all the instructions were in Hebrew. Great. I’m alone in the Middle East, and I can’t figure out a vending machine. A line was gathering behind me, with some amused people watching. I walked away. No water.

Eventually I grew the courage to ask. Of course, everyone at the coffee shop spoke English. I had my water for seven shekels, and I sat to wait for Hoffer and the other arrival. He never showed up (I later met him on the tour. A wonderful Mexican American named Fernando), so it would be Hoffer and me driving to the hotel. It was an hour or so, driving along the West Bank (so he told me), and into the city. Eventually, we began to chat. I found out that along with driving a shuttle, Hoffer made Techno (or Trance) music. He played some for me, very loud. It seemed to ease him that I was interested. It eased me that he was talking… and settled my conspiracy theory that he was actually working for some terrorist organization and was taking me to a place to decapitate me. Like I said: no preparation, no expectation. And some ridiculous fears.

The hotel was on the bank of the Mediterranean Sea. It was late. I had no idea if it was safe to walk around or not. I walked around the hotel for a while, spoke to no one, and went to sleep. It took some smuggled sleep medication to put me out, and I woke up at 4:45. I had spent a night in Israel. Who knew what the morning would bring. My thoughts were becoming more and more profound…at this point, if you could hear my monologue, you’d hear "I’m in Israel. I’m actually in Israel. This is Israel. Look at that! That’s Israel. I’m really in Israel."