Israel Day 1-2: Smooth Stones

This is a first in a series of blogs I plan to post about our trip to Israel. Check back each week for an update. 

FYI, I also plan to start a weekly series on the Life of Christ and the book of Colossians. I am teaching both right now and plan to include a summary thought of the truth and challenge as a blog. 

Smooth Stones

Today, our first full day touring and studying Israel, has been a great day. God is at work in my heart and mind. I am seeing places and touching things I only imagined existed from reading the Bible. As I write this blog I don’t even know where to start. Not only are we literally walking as fast as we can from place to place we are reading the scripture and seeing it “in context” like never before. It’s a fire hydrant of information that I will be processing for a long time. 

It’s hard to choose the place that impacted me most so far. Last night we stoped at Gezer and learned about Cannanites and their dead stones of pagan worship. But today, weather it was Beth Shemeh where we learned about Sampson and his “slippage,” Lachish where we learned about Hezekiah and his passionate faithfulness to God, or taking a swim (more like a float, literally) in the Dead Sea, its hard to choose the place that impacted me most.

I have decided to share about a place where a very familiar story happened. It’s located in the Shephelah, in the Valley of Elah, in the city of Azekah. It’s the story of David and Goliath.  As we sat on a hill looking over this valley, reading the story from the text…I saw the story come to life. I can’t share all that I learned but I understood in a new way how a young boy, full of trust in God, aware of his talents and how he was gifted, with the passion for God’s glory, and the motive to make God of Israel know in the world can have a huge impact.  He was not focused on his own glory like Saul but focused on the glory of God and was used in a huge way.

Beyond the story that took place there was what we got to do after our study. As you know, this valley was a common place for battles between Israel and the Philistines and this

 valley was naturally between two mountain ranges, Israel on one mountain and the Philistines on the other with the battles taking 

place down in the valley. You remember how David killed Goliath. He took five smooth stones from the stream, put them in his pouch along with his sling, and aggressively approached the line of battle with Goliath. He took out a stone, slung it at Goliath hitting him in the forehead and killing him (2 Sam.17). 

Here is where we come in. There is only one stream in this valley and it sits at the bottom of the mountain on the Israel side. This is the only stream for David to collect five smooth stones…Holly and I walked through this stream today. It’s crazy because this had to be where David came down the mountain to get his stones to fight Goliath…we were in this exact same spot! We even pick up stones from the dry steam bed. I can’t believe it…as we looked onto the valley where David killed Goliath Holly and I pick up stones from the exact same stream that David did. Totally cool! 

There are many lessons I learned from all our studies today that I could share, but I am so blown away that God has given Holly and I this blessing that I can’t get it off my mind. The blessing of being in Israel and seeing where the Bible originally took place is unbelievable. I can’t wait for what we will see and do tomorrow!