Orientation

this week has been crazy! after a crazy semester that was followed by three glorious restful weeks, I am back in the thick of it - reading, listening to lectures, waking up before 8:00, double-checking my packing...

I AM SO EXCITED!!! We've been talking about the food (excellent, in Janet's opinion), the people (hospitable, conservative, predominately Muslim for the first half and secular Jew for the second), the culture (don't cross your legs and show people the sole of your foot, don't make eye-contact with a man in the streets of Syria if you're a woman, do barter in the souks, or markets), and the travel (often by bus, often very slow at checkpoints between borders).

Our leaders have been telling us stories from the last several trips they've led through the Middle East - stories of students who got sick from eating chicken at an uncertified restaurant, students who met interesting people in the old city of Jerusalem, female students who got heckled in Cairo, students who thought their passports got stolen only to find it in their luggage at the end of the trip...

We've been talking about why God chose the land of Israel for his people. "Why," Linford asked, "not the Bahamas? Why somewhere hard?" We looked at the Nile to the south, the Euphrates to the North, the Jordan to the East, and realized that there is no major river flowing through most of Israel. Linford said, "Empires are built by rivers. Yet God gave his people the land between - the land dependent on rain..." He told us how important it seems to be that people keep moving; just like God expected his people to depend on the grace of rain, he expects them to turn from the security of empire and the stagnant water of comfort. We saw how God's people always seemed to grow while in Exile or in Exodus; how the Bible is a book full of cross-cultural stories. We talked about doubt and the difficulty of travel - how we will change and will return a different person.

Abraham's story connects to this. We looked at Hebrews 11 in class and read how those who left their country, following God's call, would have been able to return...but they chose to look ahead. And in doing so, it was impossible for them to remain the same. Even if they had returned to their own land, they would have been different because of their encounter with the Living God, because of their encounter with new people, because the discomfort of travel causes humans to grow in unexpected ways.


I am already seeing that I am not going to come back from this trip - the person I am now, never having left North America, will be gone. I will be different; I will be new. I will come home changed.