Jesus Walked

The history I have studied about the land of Israel has given me a picture of it being like a knot in a rope that is being used in a 'tug a war'. The borders are always being hit with blows from both sides. Many of their wars, even within the last century, have been miraculous victories (or even just survival) with uneven odds that are working against them. Many people claim that God's hand is still protecting this nation like in the days of the Old Testament. As a result of all this fighting these people are tough. They have had to live much like a 'boy named Sue' where you 'get tough or die'. Even the women, we have often seen them at all the check points, dressed in the full military attire. Even the ladies you see on the street that are wearing the trendy and fashionable clothing are sometimes packing an automatic rifle, as they are chatting on their mobiles. Last night Jordan noticed a pretty tough truck that was jacked up with big mudder tires, getting fixed right on the side of the street by three ladies our age. Two of them were underneath the truck one was under the hood, their tools in hand. They seemed prepared for any unexpected problems, wearing their white pants. He probably would have gone over to say, 'Hi' but I think he was scared of getting beat up. This country truly has a thick skin and you seen it with all the check points and the racial screening. Arabs can be full citizens here and will still not be allowed to buy land. Israel has a fear that someone may be plotting against them. Who can blame them when you think of the surrounding neighbors, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt who have at one time or another waged attacks with Israel. Even within the country there are Palestinian states, the West bank, and Gaza, who are usually not very peaceful. So this is what we see in the Holy Land today. The place God promised to His people through Moses. The place where Jesus Walked. Jesus did walk around in these hills, and even when he heard about His dieing friend, Lazarus, it would have been a 3 day walk to go see him. Today those paths are a little flatter and covered with a smooth layer of asphalt. And so we too, decided to venture out and explore this land on a 'road trip'. The group was Scott, Anthony, Jordan, Daniel, and I. The trip was called, 'Aqua Adventures in Israel' or 'Canada Day's Beach Party in Israel'. The mission was to circle the entire border of Israel and swim in all 4 bodies of water and the Jordan river in 24 hours. Scott has perfected the Arabic language, and Anthony was able to loosen up most check point officers with his Witty Hebrew. And the three of us were able to... well we're Canadians eh, so our bases were covered with the different neighborhoods we would be entering. We woke up at 4am and were on the road at 4:45. We went over to the Dead Sea (again, but this time on the Israeli side) and drove south down the shore as the sun was rising over the Jordanian mountains across the sea from us. We passed by the high mountains as we drove south through the Arava Valley passing by the caves of the 'Dead Sea Scrolls'. We made a quick stop to have our bodies healed and every bodily opening burned in the waters of the Dead Sea. We went further south, past garrison of Masada where, in the first century, each Jew on the hilltop committed suicide before their defeat by the Roman Army, that was camped in the valley below them. The valley lead us all the way down to the Red Sea, where we found it to be like a beach town. It was really nice clear blue water that we could see some colourful fish and the reef as we swam. From that point we could see the hills of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt while swimming just off the Israeli beach. After our short swim, we moved on up along the border of Egypt, cruising through the dessert. We passed over the hills and through the valleys, seeing many different places that I imagined to be the battle fields of some of the largest armored tank battles the history of the world, that took place only around 40 years ago. I tried to imagine the scene of such a large amount of land mines, being hit as rows and rows of tanks would be advancing into enemy territory all firring shells. Seeing fighter jets doing fly by bombings and 'dog fighting' in the air. All of this would have been to a greater scale than Hitler's battles against Russia in the WWII. We were stopped at a check point when we were advancing towards the Gaza Strip. We were advised to take a route further from that border, unless of course we had guns. There was no joking here, it seemed that the next check point in that direction was only letting people with any kind of gun go by. Since Jordan forgot his air soft at the church we felt we shouldn't risk it. I guess 3 rockets had fallen from Gaza that day already. Our secondary route took us through one huge hole in the ground. It has been there a long time, so no one really knows what happened. There are two theories I heard; because the rock that they find on the bottom of the hole, people think it is either a huge space rock that hit, or some kind of volcanic activity. I think it may have something to do with Star Wars. Either way we enjoyed standing on the edge of those big cliffs throwing big rocks down and watching them explode into dust when they hit. Later on, we did actually find ourselves getting right up beside the border of the Gaza Strip where we could see into what seemed to be a very normal peaceful town over the border. We didn't make any stops there, we just continued over to the Mediterranean. We happened to find a beach with some waves that people were surfing. So we were able to ride in the waves for a few mins before we drove on north, up the entire coast. It was a beautiful drive, that sort of reminded me of the North American west coast. It was a very beautiful drive that we all enjoyed. Although Dan managed to hurl hummus and bread onto the road and on the side of the car after we ate, it was alright we had all finished by that point. We had to drive through Tel Aviv and some small towns during rush hour and we were put behind schedule, so at that point we were rushed to make it to our next point which was a mountain top that borders Israel and Lebanon, where we hoped to see the military forces cruising around at that very tense border, and to see the sun set from that point. We managed to be just a little to late and were only able to see the lights of the border and towns around. From there we went for Pizza and continued to the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River for a swim. We knew the sun wasn't there to dry our shorts after our swim to get back into the car, so as a result we decided to not post those photos of this swim on the blog. Our drive back to Jerusalem was long and dark, each one of us was fighting to stay awake. (I usually loose that fight) But after a few driver rotations we made it back with a little time to spare. Our Mission Was Accomplished! All around this awesome country in 24 hours.

Kenton.