This Saturday, I leave for Jordan for a week. I will be living with traditional, rural Bedouin in the desert wadis with the hopes of gathering a glimpse into what life was like back in the days of Abraham. The reason this can be done is because Bedouin life has barely changed in thousands of years.
So, you want the best modern day example of Old testament life, the only place left to find it is in the middle of no-where in Jordan. I am very excited. We have to go to the bathroom in the sand for a week. And kill our own sheep in order for the group to eat (Read Genesis 18 on hospitality expectations and that is basically what we get to experience).
Once I leave Israel, I will not be returning. I fly from Amman, Jordan to Tel Aviv to transfer to my flight home to the states in two weeks. Pretty crazy! 9 months has gone by so very fast.
Needless to say, this will probably be one of the last blogs I write while here. I am so far behind on my blogging...I just had a very hard time keeping up with it this semester ( the internet here has been exceptionally bad this semester). When I get home, I hope to update as best I can, but we will see!
I figured for the next 5 days, I will give a countdown of the top 10 things I have learned while being here (2 everyday for the next 5 days). These will range from a variety of topics, and I will try to order them from least significant to most significant.
Number 10
I love Minnesota.
You know the saying "you never know what you got till its gone?" Well, it is very true (which I've always known..but never imagined agreeing to it in terms of my home state). Don't get me wrong, I love Israel and have loved being here. But leaving MN has made me realize how amazing it is. Not being home for 9 months...going a year thus far without seeing snow or having the temperature below 0 (longest ever in my life), I am completely shocked at how much I missed it! On top of that, I've realized that rural-small-MN-nice-towns, do have a lot of the characteristics found in the common village of the Bible. This surprised me. Needless to say, while studying the cultural backgrounds of the Bible, there are many similarities I saw between ancient Israel and MN. The only explanation I can come up with is, the Christian Lutherans and such who immigrated to MN had some form of ancient connection (probably through Church historical traditions) with Jews who still had basic structural ideas from Israelite times. That or the similarities are just a part of being human. I know this seems crazy, but regardless where it started, there is a great sense of what true life is all about sprawled throughout Minnesota: family, God and land. The thing that is sad, is how fast this culture is disappearing. Feel free to blame my generation.
Number 9
The Palestinian/Israeli conflict is super simple and practically impossible to solve. Also, I don't believe that Christians should support Jews and forsake the Arabs as a result, or vice versa. I truly believe that as an American who has not grown up or lived in the heart of these conflicts, for myself to be very opinionated about the matter does not support the love of humanity but rather the destruction. I am not saying to not support the Jews or Arabs (I am in no way anti-semitic or racist at all). I am saying understand the conflict is way off of the American radar, and be careful on what you believe and say. I have watched Americans get in arguments over this issue and divide as a result of it; people who have no right to use a conflict they are not connected to in any way who end up hating each other in the end. This completely blows my mind now.
Well. There ya go. More to come in the next few days.
-Me
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