A Lesser Miracle?

Dianna and I are on the flight home from Israel, reflecting on something many would consider mere coincidence. I might too, had the same not before also been God’s way of inserting Himself into the mundane of life.

More than a quarter century ago I was sent to Indonesia to research and write a book on the Mission Aviation Fellowship relief effort following the massive 1976 earthquake there. The challenge was to somehow get input from as many of the dozens of missionaries as possible who lived through the quake.

Indonesia is a huge place, and missionaries under different boards were spread throughout the vast country. Yet it just so happened that during the few days I was there, a missionary conference brought together almost all the pivotal players in one location, virtually in the middle of nowhere. In one afternoon I was able to personally interview on tape every eyewitness for the book The Night the Giant Rolled Over.

Yesterday’s serendipitous event was no less coincidental or, in my mind, less divine. After nearly a week of researching ruins and relics, trying to get a bead on the time of Christ for Dr. Tim LaHaye’s and my next novel series, The Jesus Chronicles, I was delivered the mother lode of resources. Our guide deposited us at The Nazareth Village, an excavation and recreation of an actual section of Nazareth from the time of Jesus.

We perused not just 2,000-year-old foundation stones, typical of most ruins, but also recreations of actual homes, stables, a carpenter shop, a synagogue…full-sized structures we could walk through, complete with costumed characters from the period doing what they did back then: children playing with donkeys, picking olives, offering baked bread; a woman spinning wool into strands for a rug; a carpenter crafting a threshing fork.

The only thing that could have been more perfect would have been to take from the site a book with even more information about the First Century village where Jesus grew up. I asked the curator for his best guidebook on early Nazareth, assuming he would choose one from the many colorful selections in the souvenir shop.

What are the odds that I had stumbled upon the author of the ideal resource for a novelist wanting to accurately recreate the period? Mike Hostetler and a colleague had just finished such a book, full of photographs and statistics: how many days it would take to walk from one city to another; the average rainfall; the typical temperatures…in short, precisely what I needed. But their book was to be self-published in a couple of months, about the time I would be writing my first novel in the new series. I really needed it now.

He showed it to me on his computer, and as I salivated over the treasure, I talked myself into making a bold request. Was there a chance he would copy the book on disk for me? He was aware of my work, but we had never met. Yet as a brother in Christ, I believe he knew he could trust me to do justice to the acknowledgments and permissions and that citing his magnum opus might benefit both it and The Nazareth Village.

I have in my briefcase the ideal resource for the first book in The Jesus Chronicles, and there is not an iota of doubt in my mind that I was divinely led to the one man who could provide it. I envision this remaining one of the highlights of my researching career, and I can’t wait to get to the writing.

Last Day

Hard to believe it's almost over. Rose at 5 this morning to see the sun rise over the Sea of Galilee. One of yesterday's highlights was a boatride on the Sea and the crew raising the American flag to a recording of The Star Spangled Banner. Amazing how moving that can be when you least expect it so far from home. On the other hand, many Israelis mention wanting to be our 51st state. :)

Our guide told us yesterday he had also hosted Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who insisted on eating where no one would recognize her. He succeeded in finding a place. Six dollars per person. His boss asked, "Why would you take such a dignitary to such a place?"

He also hosted Mikhail Gorbachev and Cindy Crawford -- not at the same time; that would be an interesting date, eh?

Dianna loved our stop at a diamond processing plant, and I will be "enjoying" it for the next several pay periods.

Today we go to Nazareth, Caesarea, and finally Tel Aviv for the flight home.

Some Day

It's an hour or two before dinner on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, as if we need one more bite after a day of pita and hummus. We could live on that.

It's been quite a day. Hot. Though our guide tells us it is cool for this area and can get to 110 degrees later in the summer.

We visited the Mount of Beatitudes, read the sermon from the Scripture aloud, sang Amazing Grace in the beautiful chapel, and visited Capernaum -- adult home of Jesus (staying mostly with Peter as He had nowhere else to lay his head). This was where Jesus horrified the Pharisees by his teaching in the temple and all the many miracles. He eventually cursed Capernaum and Bethsaida (which we also visited) because they rejected Him despite His many miracles in those cities.

How interesting and moving to see 2,000-year-old foundations of Peter's house, the synagogue in Capernaum, and the homes in Bethsaida.

Another highlight of the day was seeing a boat from the time of Jesus, excavated and preserved. It made the period come alive for us.

It will take much sleep and rumination at home to put it all in perspective, but we sense this is one of those rare trips of a lifetime.

Sunrise

We awoke Friday to the sun rising over Lake Tiberias (which we know as the Sea of Galilee) here in the north of Israel. It was great to reconnect with Dr. Tim LaHaye, who is hosting a large group. We coordinated our schedules to be here at the same time for a TV documentary.

Yesterday, before driving two and a half hours here, the highlight -- as it was when Dianna and I were here 25 years ago -- was the Yad Vashem memorial to the holocaust victims. That may sound ironic from an Evangelical walking in the footsteps of Jesus, but I guarantee that if you visit the Holy Land, you will be struck to your core by the stark, horrifying evidence of the epitome of man's inhumanity to man.

Indeed the atrocities committed against God's chosen people remain the ugliest chapter in human history, as the motive -- if it can be called that -- was simply a commitment to deny an entire people group its right to exist. It had nothing whatever to do with ideological differences or retaliation for any offense real or imagined. Adoloph Hiter and his henchmen were determined to rid their world of the Jew, and their heinous methods are now on display for the world to see. And hopefully to decide to join the Jews in the determination that the same shall never happen again.

Clothes, shoes, pictures, letters, video and audio tapes bring the victims to life, personalizing them for the viewers, who trudged through the exhibits in stunned silence. In one section photographs of beautiful children, 1.5 million (think of it) of whom were slaughtered, are hauntining displayed as their names are somberly read over the backdrop of mournful sounds.

My life has not been the same since first I saw this in 1980, and the new Yad Vashem is all the more effective in awakening an indifferent populace. I would never come to the Holy Land without paying my respects at this shrine to the innocent dead.

One surprise this time was to learn that much of this memorial was financed by the famed Spiegel catalog people, who lost an infant son, Uziel, at Auswich in 1944. When you see photo after photo after photo of real people denied their right to exist -- not to mention the unspeakable crimes committed against their bodies while alive -- this historical reality becomes horrifyingly personal and you can hardly get your mind around how recent this really was.

Last time I returned home to write a novel that included my experience. This time I must strategize an even more tangible attempt to contribute to the resolve of our beloved Jewish friends and chorus with them, "Never, never again."

The rest of our day was spent in Bethlehem, the unlikely but prophesied birthplace of the ultimate peace giver -- yet the city remains a hotbed of hostilities between the Israelis and the Palestinians -- the city itself now under the latter's jurisdiction. Even that unpleasantness could not dampen the thrill of being in the very city of the birth of our Lord.

Then it was on to the north here and Galilee where we will float on the Sea today and be reminded of Jesus miraculous pulic ministry.

...Feeling at home in this exotic place thousands of miles from where we live as strangers in a strange land, just passing through.

Exhausted

The hard streets of the Old City are tough hard on old arthritic knees. Limping tonight. Staggering tomorrow.

Today we saw a site excavated since our last visit that reveals 2,000-year-old streets on which Jesus would have walked. We saw the stalls near the temple where Hhe might have overturned the tables of the money changers. We're on sensory overload.

We visited the Temple Mount, walked through the tunnels of the Western Wall -- talk about claustrophobia -- prayed at what used to be called the Wailing Wall (now called the Western Wall), walked the Via Dolorosa and the traditional stations of the cross, visited the Mount of Olives, saw the Kidron Valley and the Eastern Gate.

Finally we visited the Garden Tomb, the highlight of the day. I was reminded of the Soul Window, which would have allowed light in to prove to John that the body of Jesus was no longer there. Which confirmed his belief.

That was just the first day, but it will take weeks to process. Our beliefs have been confirmed anew as well.

Finally Here

It's five o'clock in the morning Wednesday here in Jerusalem, and I am enjoying (?) the zombie-like state of alertness of the sleep-deprived jetlagger.

What an adventure getting here!

My chief of staff, Tim MacDonald, and Dianna and I left Colorado Springs for Denver at around eight in the morning Monday and had an uneventful flight (the best kind) to JFK in New York. There we learned that our 9:15 p.m. El Al plane to Tel Aviv had a cracked windshield and would not be taking off until 1:30 in the morning. (We voted for fixing it before takeoff, and no, El Al does not stand for "every landing always late.")

When we finally checked in, the El Al agent informed Tim that he was in the system as traveling with a pet. I took that personally, but somehow, once that's in the computer, it's hard to excise. Tim assured them he had not brought his dog for a short international trip, while I was barking in the background, making the agent wonder.

Haim Gutin-Golan, our Israel Ministry of Tourism host -- who will be with us the whole way -- met us in the El Al lounge and proved delightful. Yes, one is expected to say one's host is delightful, if for no other reason than that he is from Israel and makes you feel less like a dolt for not having a clue how to get there and what to do when you arrive. The last time we visited Israel was in 1980, 25 years and more than a hundred pounds ago. Back then the Dead Sea was only sick.

The fact is, Haim is delightful, and having been at this for so long, knows many of my old friends who have visited the Holy Land over the years.

Of course only Haim, the Israeli representative, had trouble getting past the passport police. They chose to question his diplomatic credentials, and then asked what he planned to do about paying for the pet in our party. He speaks Hebrew and soon rejoined us in line.

I made the mistake of using my Dead Sea crack while in the line of 400 or so passengers shuffling onto the 747-400 in the wee hours, and I was overheard by an Orthodox a couple positions ahead of us . I had not seen one of those interestingly-attired gentlemen break into laughter before. I sensed he was going to use that line as soon as he got home.

One simply endures an 11-hour plane ride, but we did find the El Al crew most accommodating. I don't sleep well on planes, so I tried to redeem the time getting work done on the computer. It should have made the time fly, but...

The flight attendants greet everyone in Hebrew and English, then continue the conversation in whichever language the passenger uses to respond.

Once in Tel Aviv at the beautiful new Ben Gurion airport, again it was Haim whose luggage was delayed. Needless to say we kidded him mercilessly about trying to keep up with us and wondering why the facilitator of the trip was always holding up the works. Fortunately he has a great sense of humor. I hope.

Eventually we were met by our driver, Nachshon Zada, and his brand new Volkswagen van -- that has a surprising amount of juice for a VW. Within an hour we had rocketed through the Judean Hills to the gleaming, new David Citadel Hotel. We were ready to crash, of course, it having been 30 hours since we left Colorado. The clock was pushing 10 p.m.

People eat dinner late here, they tells us, and when tour coordinator Paul Manor led us across the street and up the block to the trendy 1868 Restaurant, who should be dining with a large party but Shimon Peres himself. The former (and perhaps future) prime minister is in his 80s and still involved in the government here -- especially with Ariel Sharon in the U.S. just now.

We didn't know whether to feel safer because of all the security in the restaurant or consider ourselves ancillary targets.

By midnight we were finally in bed.

In a couple of hours we will meet our guide, Avinoam Glick, and begin an exhuasting tour of the Christological sites. We're ready and can hardly wait. Israel has indeed changed in a quarter century. It is built up, modernized, bustling. Of course, we have changed too. We left two little boys at home when we came here in 1980. This trip we will return to three grown sons, two daughters-in-law, and three grandbabies.

Meanwhile we will drink in every site (and sight) and sound and taste of the land of our Savior, hoping to stay ahead of any microbes that might cause us to sing, "I ran today where Jesus walked."

The universality of family life hit us at Ben Gurion when a dark-haired toddler raced past us and from behind we heard a mother call out, "Avi! Slow down!"

We won't be slowing until we get home. We may not be sleeping until then either, but, hey, trips like this come along -- for us at least -- only once every 25 years.

More later.

We Leave Monday...

...for a really fast trip to the Holy Land. We'll fly from Denver to New York, then on to Tel Aviv. Dianna and I have not been to Israel since 1980, and my chief of staff, Tim MacDonald, has never been. We're looking forward to a great trip and to keeping you up to date on all the sights and sounds.

The primary purpose of the trip is research for a four-novel series entitled The Jesus Chronicles, set in First Century Israel.

Looking forward to keeping you posted...