A Portion of Infinity

There is something about the human heart that is not made for this world. The earth is limited and finite and although we exist within it, we cannot be satisfied by it. Our desires are deeper, our needs more extensive, and our souls more immeasurable. We have a hole in our hearts that longs to be filled, and cries out for infinity! But we get distracted. Rather than running to find the one thing that can actually fill our hole, we begin to fill it with whatever we can grab, desperately hoping it will fit--or at least patch it over temporarily. Our lives are full of blessings, even immeasurable blessings such as love and joy, but when we begin to depend on these things to fill our hole, we realize that without perfection, they are not as vast as they seemed. Our love is flawed, our joy circumstantial. The world will fail us, our own hearts will fail us, and what a wonderful discovery it is that God is everything we need! That can be easy to say, but when something we want is at risk, it can seem that we need more than what God is offering. Is it your future? Your child's future? Your safety? Are you putting these things before Him? Surely, they cannot fill your heart. We desire to be loved, but who is more loving than the One who sent His only Son to die in our place? We want to be joyful, but what can bring more joy to someone than the news we are no longer slaves to sin? We can search the world for satisfaction and pleasure, but what could be more blissful than connection with omniscient, benevolent Creator of the universe?

What can we desire compared to the Lord!? This question can best be answered by another, recorded in Psalm 74, written by Asaph:

Whom do I have in heaven but You?
And there is none upon earth that I desire besides you
My heart and my flesh fail
But God is the strength of my heart and portion forever (v. 25-26)

We have nothing that can compare to riches of the Lord! He is our satisfaction, our joy, our security. Look within yourself, and pray this prayer (above) that Asaph prayed so long ago. God is more valuable than anything we could desire, and he is calling us to Himself. Augustine said it so perfectly in the 4th century, and it will always be true:

"Oh Lord you made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in You"

Paul Wright the Great

Dr. Paul Wright is not your average professor. The man is a genius, both in regard to his familiarity with the Bible and the city of Jerusalem. He knows a seemingly endless amount of history: describing events with such detail, clarity, and passion, his mind is overflowing with more information than a textbook but his delivery puts textbooks to shame. I do not think that I have heard him say the words "I don't know" and that is most likely because there isn't anything that this man doesn't know. Walking the city with such comfort while he feeds us with such elaborate information it almost seems as if he wrote the book of history, which he did--we're reading for his class. His teaching style can be most clearly depicted by a man dumping a bucket of water over my head while I strive to swallow as much as I can, because man, I'm thirsty for what he has. I knew Jerusalem would change me--I had no idea it would be like this. I did not know it was possible to know this much, and I did not know that one could love Jerusalem or God as much as he does.

While learning about Herod the Great, I was overwhelmed with the idea that certain things never change. Like many men today (Bill Gates, for example), Herod was an ambitious man, who, although full of pride, achieved enormous accomplishments throughout his life that have been remembered for over 2,000 years. Regardless of what else we determined about him, especially in regards to his ego, we must not fail to consider the incredible impact he made in this particular region of the world. Thankfully, we can also remember him by interacting with those who continue to live like him: there is no shortage of men who seem to be under the impression that they rule the world, or even something of value—the only difference is that Herod actually ruled a part of it. Yes, his jurisdiction may have been comparably smaller than Alexander’s or Darius’s, but for what little he had he was quite productive. Most impressive was his ability to please both the Romans and the Jews—for the most part. Although he wasn’t even part Jewish, he was humble enough (or maybe just smart enough) to know when to let the Jews have their way with the Temple while still being able to impress the Roman officials above him, thus bringing glory to the empire.

Though the construction of Herod’s temple is not recorded in any scripture to be ordained by God, Jesus himself regarded it of matching value as the previous temple, referring to it as the house of God (Matthew 21:13). It was such an out-of-body experience to walk the steps that Jesus walked and where Gamaliel (famous Jewish Rabbi) taught Paul and where the apostles would have met during the time of the early church in Acts. This is the site where they added to their number daily (Acts 2)! Christianity owes most of its identity to the initial growth that took place in Jerusalem within the temple. After these experiences, my biggest prayer has been that God would give us all the ability to bring this information back to the United States and teach those who are unable to make it here themselves. This city is full of so much history, but more important are those events that changed history as we know it. In order to fully comprehend much of the Bible, one must understand the physical settings of those who wrote it, for the authors wrote with their own presuppositions and assumptions that the audience would be aware of, but for those removed from Ancient Israel (in both time and place), much of what is assumed is not understood. Christ, my prayer is that you would enable us to tell the world about you and what you have done here, and create within us the same heart for Jerusalem that you have.

Jerusalem: Week 1

After a week in the Holy Land I finally figured out how to change the language on Blogger, and thus begin a blog... okay, maybe I was just a little busy, but that's why I gave up after one try.

Anyway, the first week has been nothing short of mind-blowing. In my novice opinion, this place contains more history and conflict than anywhere else on earth, and rather than standing around and looking at it (like most tourists are doing), the locals just live their lives right on top of it. It doesn't mean much for Shu'baan, an Arab Christian shopkeeper that his shop is a 2-minute walk from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher--the site of Christ's death and burial tomb. Although there has been countless years of conflict between the Jews and Muslims, most of them seem quite capable of living what they consider to be 'normal' lives without being willing to further the conflict.

So far we have seen almost all of the Old City (but will continue to study it in more detail throughout the semester), climbed the Mount of Olives twice (once at sunrise to read the Sermon on the Mount), and just returned from Jericho (where we toured a few Orthodox monasteries and climbed the Mount of Temptations, where Our Lord was tempted in the wilderness by Satan). As much as we've seen, there's even more to come, and I couldn't be more excited!

More to come,
Jonathan