Roses and Lizards

Although I am, of course, an exceedingly normal person, I will admit to one or two minor quirks. For example, I like to walk while I read, especially if I'm reading anything that tends to put me to sleep. Especially if I've just spend the rest of the day in class sitting. So today, in the beautiful 70-degree weather, I went outside, A History of Israel in hand, camera slung over my back, and began to stroll around our garden. While I did eventually finish my reading (about Cyrus and Ezra and the return from exile), I must confess that I was distracted once or twice.

One of the first things I noticed was some strange wildlife that seemed to be building a home in one of our trees.

Actually, there was quite a bit of life - a variety of birds and bugs, and even one cute little lizard I caught crawling around on a rock.

Tangent: I've decided that I like lizards. And since we don't have them in MT, I have to enjoy them whenever possible. For example, I was sitting in my Second Temple history class tonight, studiously taking notes, when I happened to see movement by the front upper left corner. Yes, it was another lizard (two in one day!!) Unfortunately, I was so enamored with it that my teacher was distracted by my adoring gaze and I was forced to explain what I found so fascinating about the wall behind him. Yeah, I'm kind of a dork. Oh well.

But back to the garden, most of the more interesting wildlife wandered off to more promising locals as the sun continued its downward journey. This enabled me to spend more time concentrating on my book.

Speaking of which, can I take a moment to say that it bothers me when people automatically assume that any supernatural explanation for an event is clearly wrong? The author of my book (who, by the way, at least claims to be a Christian) assumes that the second part of Isaiah was written by someone other than Isaiah during (or maybe after?) the Babylonian captivity. And why does he assume this? As far as I can determine, because Isaiah mentions Cyrus by name. Clearly the original Isaiah would have never been able to predict something this precise. (Though oddly, the author accepts Isaiah's prophecies about the Messiah). Perhaps the author has other reasons for making this assumption. Perhaps the grammatical structure is clearly different in the second half. Whatever his reasons, I wish he would at least explain them. Anyway...I have many other thoughts on this subject, which I will probably save for another time.

That delay can, perhaps, be blamed on some of the distracting flora of the garden. We still have one or two roses blooming. The picture just doesn't catch the incandescent glimmer when the sun hits the petal.

I like flowers.
Probably even more than lizards.
If a flower had suddenly started crawling across the wall in my class, I probably would have been even more distracted.

Eventually a few more fauna specimens showed up, the rare picturus colorerus. (Yeah, I know, I should learn real Latin sometime.) That's Tom, one of the grad students, with the daughters of the man who makes the campus run. :)

With all that said, I've nearly survived the first week of class here! And the two make-up classes! (Yeah, we have to make up the classes before we even miss them this semester...which has made this week especially long.) I just have archaeology tomorrow (3 hours, no break... yeah, it's a doozie). And then a weekend! So I can catch up on all my reading! Perhaps I'll go for another walk...

Shevet Achim

We had our "vespers" service a day early this week (meaning it was today) and the speaker was a man from Shevet Achim. For those of you who don't speak Hebrew, that phrase is taken from Psalm 133 where it talks about the beauty of brothers dwelling in unity. Shevet Achim is a Christian ministry in Israel that brings children with various heart diseases and malformations from Iraq, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank to Israel (Jerusalem) to have surgery. They're are a few hopitals and surgeons here who do the surgery at a greatly reduced rate. It's really pretty amazing. They obviously cross some huge boundaries. It wasn't so long ago, according to our speaker, that Iraqis who came to Israel for any "friendly" reason would basically committing a crime worth of death (against Iraq). The Israeli surgeons who do the surgeries have reason to distrust people from all of these places, and the Arabs and Kurds have reason to distrust anyone Jewish. For that matter, none of them care much for Christians. So think what a huge ministry opportunity this is. Not only are children's lives saved, but it is a chance to bring Jews and Muslims and Christians together in an environment that is condusive to reconcilliation at some level. It is a chance for the believers who work with this ministry to share their faith and the love of Christ with the doctors and nurses who help the children and also with the families as they wait for their children to (hopefully) heal. Tonight the man (Alex) specifically asked us to pray for Ali, a young boy who recently had surgery and is not recovering. He seems to be slowly slipping away. Alex also asked prayer for the boy's father, Hussein.

It was a really touching presentation. Alex invited all of us to come down some day and play with the kids, and I'd really love to do that at some point. I don't have a very good idea of what I want to do with my life after this (far too many options!) but I am pretty sure that I want to be with children/youth in some capacity. How that will pan out, I don't know, but there you have it.

In other, tangentially related, news... It's kind of funny, but all the time someone will mention some ministry or government position or just random things, and someone else will say, "Oh, yeah, there's a JUC graduate working there." So, apparently JUC graduates are everywhere (including one at Shevet Achim).