Digging Deeper

Over the last couple of days, I’ve asked several people in my three week course here in Israel: has this class awakened a desire/passion to want to dive into more archeology, more literal digging, or has this class satisfied you and confirmed: great experience, so grateful for it, AND, I don’t have a hankering for archeology and digging? I loved the responses: Some were in the “keep digging” camp. Others, like me, in the “grateful, but actual dirt, stones and artifacts are not my thing.”

It’s nice to know your bent.

And geography.

Though I’m not a map girl—

(fine motor skills are not my thing—embroidery, Kay Arthur’s Precepts course, defining routes on maps, surgery, whatever, makes me crazy. I’d much rather engage in gross motor activities that allow me to stretch out my body!)

—preparing and studying the maps of Israel have been tremendously valuable.

No kidding.

Like when I studied music theory, dictation, and a host of other mathematical components of music, (also not my thing). But these obligatory courses fill out and inform your ability to be an intelligent performer. Then you’ve got more freedom and flexibility to go wider and higher and deeper.

So I’m beyond grateful for God’s gift of opportunity, tenacity, and discipline to take a course like this, regardless of my bent and preference.

AND, here’s what’s hit me with all this fine-motor-map-coloring, geography studying discipline:

Israel has a small footprint, but it’s got radical depth. You can’t exhaust its roots and deepness. They go way, way down: thousands of years of calling, trauma, dysfunction, community, passion, suffering, horror and beauty.

Like the cocktail that makes up alluvial soil in its Jordan Valley—it’s all wrapped into the history of Israel’s land and people and God.

So, all our life long, we just keep digging.

Sort of like with the scriptures…and, well, God.

~ Nancy