A moment when I encountered God in Israel was on Mt. Precipice, what felt like my first real look at the Israel of the Bible. Already on a high from simply being in Israel, and not yet exhausted from loads of travel, this was the highly anticipated moment of finally beginning the real adventure of seeing the land of our ancestors, the land where all the amazingness of the Bible really happened! Reaching the top of the mountain and seeing the whole valley and the other mounts around us and knowing that so many amazing things from all throughout the Bible happened right in this area was unbelievable.
My bus chose to sing together as we sat on the mountain side drinking in the view, and I really encountered God in that moment – tying together the knowledge and history of my faith with the practical daily reality of my relationship and worship of Him. This moment was really pivotal in my approach to this trip, a shift in attention where I had been really solidly focused on the war and its impacts on us and on Israel as a whole (focused in a positive and a not so positive way) to remembering Passages original mission of reconnecting young Christians with the roots of our faith. It was almost like being in the peaceful mountain air and the glorious view of the land that God has sustained and tangibly worked in for centuries gave me a moment to truly sit with Him and remember that He exists outside of war. He reminded me that the same peace He provided His people in the desert, in the war, in the midst of persecution, famine, death, and chaos, He would provide to me in this trip, this new nation, this uncertain situation, this adventure.
Applying this need to be still and look at where I’ve come from, this reminder of promised peace to my growth and life as a disciple of Christ is easy – or at least on paper easy. In so many moments of my life I know I will be filled with the wild raging thoughts of my mind, whether excited and good or worried and not so great, yet I have only to remember the peace of God that I encountered on Mt. Precipice, and remember all His promises to sustain me and fill me with His unsurpassed peace – just as He did in Israel thousands of years ago, just as He did for me in July, and as He does for His people each and every day.
Throughout the whole trip, I had many opportunities to encounter the literal roots of redemption in the land of Israel – from the garden to the grave. Each biblical site we visited and saw firsthand reminded me of God’s perfect plan for this world and all the ways He has been working it out since the beginning of time.
