Galilee Day 1

Tina Huber

Reflection Day 10

Galilee 1

January 16, 2012

We are off for a four day stay in Galilee. I am so excited for a couple reasons. One, our resort is THE best place I have slept at in over 2 weeks! The En Giev Resort is on the Sea of Galilee. Our room has heat, two bedrooms, a shower with a door on it, no nari crust on my bed linen, and EXTRA toilet paper in the bathroom! This is luxury! I have had to deal with some germ-a-phobic issues on this trip. My worst germodramitic moment was the first youth hostel we stayed in. When I opened the door of the room I actually thought... this is kind of cute. It had two low lying single beds in the room. I opened the bathroom and it was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. There was a drain in the middle of the bathroom and no shower curtain for the shower. In the middle of the shower lay a giant squeagy. The bathroom was just big enough for a sink and toilet and showerhead. When you shower water just sprays everywhere. Everything got drenched the toilet, the sink, and the whole floor. It was crazy in my mind but tolerable. I walked over to my bed to put my bag down and there was this large yellow, nasty, crust on the top of my blanket. At first, I just took it off and layed it on the floor but after inspecting Olivia’s linens too I ended up going to the front desk for fresh linens. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep if we kept those blankets. So, that is why I LOVE the luxury of this resort. Second, I am ready to start moving from Old Testament to New Testament. I have really enjoyed digging deeper into the Old Testament. That is the foundation of our faith and I do think it is overlooked and under taught in the Christian churches. However, I am super excited to take a deeper look into the land that Jesus grew up in and ministered in. Our first stop was Beth-shean. If you are like me, you might be thinking, never heard of it. I thought that when we walked up to the site but after reading the accounts in 1 Samuel I remembered the story linked to this city. This is where Saul, after being wounded in battle and falling on his own sword, had his body tied to the wall of this city. The Philistines were showing off their victory. The city below it was a little more fascinating to me. It was called Scythopolis and was built by the Romans. It apparently was destroyed in a huge earthquake in 747 AD. As I looked down the first thing I noticed was the huge theater seating. The Romans were trying to entice the people of this area. They wanted them to believe having Rome on your side is a good thing. All the luxuries were here. A temple, a bath house, and the theater. The Romans would slowing integrate into a culture or I should say the people of the area they occupied would integrate into a Roman lifestyle. When our instructor pointed out the theater area she said, “media has always been a mean of indocurination.” Nothing new under the sun! It is still true today! So, our first stop was a two in one. Our second stop was Meggido. We drove by the place that Jezebel got thrown off of on our way to Meggido. It was a drive by but I was glad to see it. I thought Meggido had an amazing view over the valley below. There is a ton of history in these valleys. We talked about several stories that took place within our view. Debra and Barak, King Josiah recieving his fatal wound, and Gibeon’s battle to name a few. Meggido was an important city because of its location along an international route that connected the Mediterranean coast to Damascus. The archeological site had 20 layers to it and 10 destruction layers were from the Iron Age alone. So this was a popular site to capture. A pretty cool site overall. We hop on our bus and toodle on over to Mt Carmel. Here we hiked to an area that overlooks the site where Elijah challenged Baal’s prophets. It was so cool. Just sit there and imagine witnessing God proving that He alone is God and no other god exists. That is what I pictured this trip being about. Reading scripture in places where they occured. I have not been disappointed! I love it. We read to the point that Elijah flees in fear of Jezebel and hikes to Mt Sanai. It was suggested that Elijah after this huge display of boldness, has a struggle of faith here. At Mt Sanai God reveals himself as “the sound of thinnest silence” or whisper in the wind to Elijah. I love that verse. God is not in the big and flashy moments. He is more often in the quiet, reflective moments. How can we hear our shepherd if we aren’t listening. Our last stop was on Nazareth. Finally! Jesus territory! This small village sat up in a secluded hillside. Below them the international road ran through the valley. This area was a conservative people who believed in the one true God and were looking for their messiah. Jesus would have grown up in this village with it huge cliffs overlooking the valley below. The history of his people would be present in his daily life because so many stories happened within his view. We read Luke 4. Jesus reads the passage of Isaiah in the synagogue. We discussed how the crowd went from being in awe to wanting to throw him over a cliff with in a few short sentences. Jesus was telling this heavily taxed and Roman controlled people that they were not the oppressed. The Romans were the ones oppressed and suffering because they didn’t know God. Basically that God loves the Romans too. They were ready to stone Jesus for saying this! We sat along the edge that they would have brought him to throw him over. This cliff is named the flying cliff because some say he flew over the people and escaped. I’ve never heard that part before. I enjoyed imagining Jesus just being a boy and playing on these hills.