Remembering....Reflecting.....Or How to Spend a Gloomy Winter Day

Yesterday was one of the gloomiest days I've experienced in quite some time.  We were fogged in for most of the day here on our mountaintop.  Even in midafternoon, it was as dark as early morning just before the sun comes up or as late evening just before it's completely dark.  A very strange day indeed.  I felt as though I must have moved to Alaska in midwinter, since we had so little light throughout the day.

I spent some time yesterday working on a photo book of our most recent trip to Israel.  I've been working on this project for a while now.  It's quite a daunting task, since there are thousands of photos to sort through.  The sorting alone is time-consuming, but is made even more so because I tend to stop so often for remembering and reflecting.  Eventually I decided that I would break the task up into destinations visited and take each of them one at a time, and that has helped me move more efficiently through all these photos.  As of yesterday evening, I have made it as far as Mt. Carmel!

Before we ever visited Israel, and during both the times we were there, I remember hearing over and over that once you have visited Israel you never read the Bible in the same way.  I'm finding that to be true.  It's as though now you are able to read it in its context, as when you read passages that you visited you now are able to recall exactly what it looked like and can see in your mind's eye the places you are reading about.

Psalm 42:1 is a good example. "As the deer pants for the water, so my soul pants for You, O God."  I have read and sung that verse more times than I could even begin to count.  But singing about a deer panting for water took on a whole different meaning once I had been to En Gedi.  Here in the NC mountains, a deer doesn't have to go far to find a stream of water.  So while I might understand that a deer would get thirsty, I couldn't begin to understand just how thirsty a deer would get in the mountains where this verse was written.  Mountains that look like this:

That's the Dead Sea in the background.  There's water there, but it is not drinkable.  Not even for deer.

Think about that next time you read or sing that verse.  Exactly how thirsty are you?

At church on Sunday we heard a message from Matthew 14, the passage about Peter walking on the water and then sinking when he took his eyes off Jesus.  This took place on the Sea of Galilee.  As the pastor began reading the passage, my mind took me immediately to the Sea.  This last time when we were there, the day was a little windy and the water was a little rough, so when the pastor read that "the boat was a long distance from the land, battered by the waves, for the wind was contrary," I could picture that exactly.

One of the places I love to visit is the Church of the Anunciation in Nazareth.  This church is built over the place where it is believed that the angel Gabriel gave Mary the news that she would give birth to the Son of God.  There's a museum there with all sorts of artifacts from the time of Christ, in displays that look like this one:



Do you see those long-necked bottles?  They are called tear bottles.  In the past, people would collect tears in these bottles as a means of mourning or of respect.  Tears were often collected in tear bottles and then buried with the loved one as a sign of love and devotion.  Which makes Psalm 56:8, a verse about tears in a bottle, make so much more sense to me.

Today is starting out to be another gray, gloomy day.  Maybe I'll get a few of my household tasks done today.  Or maybe not!  Because I think I'm going to be spending a lot of time on this photo book again today.  Sorting through pictures.  Remembering.  Reflecting. 

"You Yourself have recorded my wanderings.  Put my tears in Your bottle.  Are they not in Your records?"  (Psalm 56:8 HCSB)