Day 5 - June 13

Monday, June 13

En Gedi - Ibex Springs. This morning we hiked up En Gedi to the spring of En Gedi. I guess the water that flows through there is the water that flows from Jerusalem and is hundreds of years old! We talked about Mime Haim or "living water." The definition of living water is and water from God without man transporting it - Any rain, stream...not stagnant. We talked about Jesus' temptation by Satan in the desert. Kent had us close our eyes. He named off words - Almighty, powerful, omnicience, omnipresent, omnipotent, awesome, love. He asked us what we pictured in our minds when we heard those words which describe God (western way of thinking). He then asked us what pictures came to our minds as he spoke - good shepherd, living water, bread of life, shade. The Hebrew Bible is full of those pictures which tag along great meaning and understanding to people. Our next trail we went on today was in the desert, En Gedi, in a wadi. It was a huge canyon and beautiful! The temp was about 108 degrees as we hiked early afternoon so we were pretty sweaty and warm throughout the hike. Finally, we stopped at a beautiful spot. there was green everywhere in this part of the Canyon because there was a small creek running through with a little pool. One thing we talked about was in the N.T. one day some people bring before Jesus, a woman who was caught in the act of adultry. According to the text, this woman should have been stoned, so the people wanted to see what Jesus would say should happen to her. Just the day before Jesus had introduced Himself as the Living Water (Mime Haim). So Jesus picked up a stick, started writing in the sand and said, "let him who has no sin cast the first stone." They all turn away, the oldest to the youngest. Noone knows what Jesus was writing, but read Jeremiah 17. There is such a simularity and those men had and entire text memorized. The coolest thing happened next. Ken t was comparing Jesus/God to the living water we were looking at. He walked down to it and splashed some on his face, which is what most of us did to cool down when we first got there. He said that is sometimes how we look at God. We'll use Him for comfort when we need it, leave and come back when we need more. Then he very quickly jumped into the pool; clothes, shoes and all waited in there till he was soaking wet, then got out. "That is what we need to do with God, what He wants us to do, jump full in" he said, "questions and all, don't just be satisfied with a splash on the face, but be soaking wet in God." He told us to all jump in and soak ourselves in God. Man, water has never felt so wonderful! After, we all had thouroughly enjoyed our soaking. Rob paointed out that some things are there also that make it not feel like such a perfect "swim" all the time. Some of us may have ruined shoes, or money (by getnig it wet) and we had to hike a ways in the heat and sweat a lot first in order to enjoy it like we did. Next, we drove to Qumran. first we ate lunch in the air conditioning, ran into Josh VanderZouwen who was there with his BBC clan. that was funny to see someone we knew in the middle of Israel! After that, we started exploring. The temperature was over 110 degrees here. It was crazy hot. It felt like we were outside standing under the hot sun PLUS a hot furnace blowing heat on us with uver gust of wind. We talked about the Escenes. the group of people who lived here. They were Levite men who moved here with texts of scripture to study and copy. They thought the desert was the place to be closest to God and sons of light. They made many many copies of Scripture. Everytime they were writing, if they made a mistake they would have to roll it up and bury it. Whenever they got to God's name, they would go out and do Mikvah (Ceremonial washing) sl they would not be unclean. They did it in between each letter of His name!! Well I'll quit now, we are in Galilee right now and we've got another long day ahead of us!