Holy Week Flashback to Israel 2008



Last Sunday was Palm Sunday, and as we were standing in church listening to the reading about Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, I had a flashback to when I was in Jerusalem in July of 2008. I was there for two and a half weeks, volunteering on an archaeological dig with a group of other Lutherans, and I blogged about it EXTENSIVELY. :)

This was our Sunday - the baptism of our godson, Levi!
(Photo courtesy of his Auntie Teresa!)

It was a defining 'moment' in my life, and even though that was almost five years ago now, I can still close my eyes and see it and hear it and smell it and taste it. I want to go back again with a passion that's actually a bit scary if I think about it too much. When I first got back, I thought about it every day. Now I only think about it every month or so, but my memories are just as vivid. I might go back and re-read my own blog posts though, starting here, because while the sensory details are clear, some of the adventures have gotten a bit blurred.

Anyway, I give you just a few of the hundreds of pictures I took. And in look back through my albums just now, I judge the photos I decided to take for being too detailed, with not enough panorama, and I didn't take pictures of things that in hindsight I wish I had, not because I'm forgetting them, but because I want to share them. Next time I go, whenever that will be...

If anyone knows of an archaeology dig looking for a copyeditor, please let me know!!! :)

 

Looking down the slope of the Mount of Olives, at the Kidron Valley. Some of these olive trees are so old that they would have been around when Jesus was there.

 

Praying at the Western Wall - one of the most profound moments in a journey that was jam-packed with them!

 

Sunset over the Sea of Galilee

 

Blue-green waters of the Sea during the afternoon - see the waves? It gets as choppy as the ocean there when the wind picks up. We went swimming every afternoon, but there would come a point where the water was too rough for it to be very enjoyable. Not so much walking where Jesus walked...but swimming where Jesus walked! :)

 

Capernaum, at the very northern tip of the Sea, looking south towards Jerusalem

 

This wander down memory lane has probably done more for me than you, but remembering my time in Israel, and what it means to me makes my heart happy! Tomorrow night as we celebrate the Passover Feast and remember the Garden of Gethsemane, and Friday morning as we remember the crucifixion, and Sunday as we celebrate the resurrection, I'll be remembering my time in Israel and the encouragement it was to my faith.

(And I might say thank-you to my really great husband who stayed home and worked while I went gallivanting all over the Holy Land... :)

 

Creation Ministries Conference

Trevor and I went to this conference back at the end of October, but my report wasn't needed until the next church newsletter deadline, which wasn't until this week. So of course I didn't write anything about it until late last week...and I didn't write as much as I wanted to, because it was already over a page long, and the longer it is, the less likely people will be to give it much attention! I'm a pretty passionate young-earth creationist, but mostly in writing, not so much in person because I'm just not that chatty, so hopefully this doesn't scare anyone away. :)

Creation Ministries Conference Report

At the end of October, Trevor and I had the exciting opportunity to attend a Creation Ministries International (CMI) conference in Red Deer. Trevor has written a five-page report on it, so ask him if you are interested in more detail, but here are some of the things I found particularly interesting.

To quote Pastor Joe Boot, one of the speakers, 'men are trying to bring the word of God in line with their sinful desires' by promoting evolution to the exclusion of a Creator. He also said that 'evolution is a religious ideology' and that 'modern evolutionists have replaced God with another idea'. It is a 'cultural myth' that many people 'believe without question', even though scientific evidence has yet to explain how it actually worked. According to the evidence, evolution could not have worked the way it has been theorized to, yet the theory is adhered to with religious fervor.

1 Timothy 6 says: ³ If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, ⁴ he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. (ESV)

Most public school (and even Catholic school) teachers and university professors unquestioningly 'believe in evolution', despite scientific evidence to the contrary. As Christians who are instructed to be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have (1 Peter 3:15), it is vital that we be familiar with the lies which the world overwhelmingly presents as fact, especially when they are presented as fact to children who do not know to question them. We need to teach the young people for whom we're responsible to have a Creator God-centered worldview, not an evolutionist one. When young people’s faith is built on the solid foundation of knowing God as their creator, and when they know that the Biblical account of creation and the age of the earth are true, they will be less likely to fall away when they go to post-secondary school and come under attack by the secular education system, which will tell them that the Bible is a myth.

Did you know that there is a very important distinction between the terms ‘evolution’ and ‘natural selection’, and that they are often used incorrectly? Did you know that ‘natural selection’ reduces genetic information and does not add new variations or improvements? Did you know that there is no such thing as a ‘simple’ cell, and that they are all too incredibly complex to have evolved by random chance? Did you know that there is only one ‘race’ – the human race – and that all humans are actually varying shades of brown? Did you know that not only did Charles Darwin likely plagiarized most of his ideas from his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, he believed that women and people with coloured skin were inferior to white men, and that his work strongly influenced the Nazi regime?

www.creation.com has hundreds of great resources with an excellent search engine, and from what I can tell, their theology is very similar to Lutheran theology. You can sign up for a daily email newsletter that contains a different creation-centric topic every day – and if it's not a topic that interests you, you can just delete it. I usually find about half of them every week to touch on something I'm interested in, and I highly recommended them! I can't say enough good things about how valuable CMI is, both as a youth leader and as a university student who hears Darwin's name almost every day, and sometimes multiple times every day.

When confronted with the university’s (false) absolute certainty that we evolved from pond scum and then an ape-like creature, I am comforted by these verses from 1 Corinthians 1:

¹⁹ For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” ²⁰…Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?... ²² For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, ²³ but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (ESV)

CMI is tentatively hoping to have another conference in Alberta in 2014, and I strongly encourage everyone to attend!  In the meantime, check out the CMI resources online, and pray for those people whose faith is under attack by the false teaching of evolution, and pray for those who teach the truth about God the Creator, that the Holy Spirit would enable willing hearts to hear the truth. And if you struggle with the false doctrine of evolution yourself, please talk to one of the church staff!

- Submitted by Michelle Heumann