My recent trip to Israel will stay with me forever. Yet as I say that, I feel like I need to do something to help me hold onto it. To express all that I saw and experienced may take a lifetime. But I need to try. With my words and some pictures I want to try to take you there too.
Our first “tour day” started at Elon Moreh. Genesis 12 tells us this is where God first took Abram to show him “The Promise”. This is where the Abrahamic Covenant began. This is a place where God spoke to our spiritual father Abram.
Bible translations says the “oak of Moreh”, or the “plain of Moreh,” or the “great tree of Moreh”, this confused me before I saw the place. I always imagined just a place – nothing special, a big tree maybe – big whoop. So, for God to take Abram there and promise “to your descendants, I give this land” was a “so what?” to me. I did not imagine that there was much to be seen. But then I saw it.
We came at sunrise. We ate a breakfast of delicious homemade cinnamon rolls. There is an oak tree at the top, likely a descendant of the tree Abram saw. Slightly down the slope to the northeast there is another larger and more beautiful tree. A small, very picturesque cave sits behind it. There is a resting place here. You can sit and try to take it all in.
It was amazing to see what Abram saw. It is actually located at the top of a hill. It would have been quite a climb for a 75-year-old man, I’m glad we rode a bus! There are rocks and grasses everywhere. The view is astounding. The land all around is vast. To imagine being told that all of it would be your offspring’s! I walked around in awe at all there was to see. It was beautiful and spread out all before me. Just like it would have been for him. I wonder how he felt. He was childless. Yet God was promising all of this to his children’s children.
You can look down into the valley and see Shechem (Nablus), now an Arab village. There were Canaanites in the land then. Abram would have seen them as well. I don’t know, maybe he wondered, “What about them? Someone is already here”! The Bible tells us in Romans 4:3 that “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness”. I wish I had that faith.
One of the things that impressed me as I spent time in Israel and with the Jewish people, the Orthodox Jews, is how they lived their faith. This is just not something they believe. They literally live it. They hold on to every promise, every prophesy, every command. It is written on their doorposts; it is lived in their choices. It is seen in their attitude. Here are Abrahams descendants in the land, the prophecy fulfilled. Yet still there are others in the land too. It must be re-claimed. There are prophecies being fulfilled and fulfillments still yet to be seen. But they hold on to them. Still they believe God. I see Abraham in this. I see the faith of Abraham in every one of them. And I stand amazed.
