The past couple weeks have been unreal. Wow. Just got back from the Holy Land… and what a journey it was to get back to the motherland, people. L O L. So to start off, our flight got delayed by two days due to a snow storm hitting Newark (*plan A)… then it ended up being 49.5 straight hours of travel from actual start to finish for me, including a nice 15 hour flight spanning the width of Europe and the Atlantic Ocean and the mainland US (from Tel Aviv, Israel to the Cali coast), a 3 hour in-plane party on the tarmac in San Fran due to “weight issues”, and a fun little overnight stay in Chicago after completely missing a flight, before the grand finale of making it back to K-Kauai in good ole Branson, MO with a double ear infection and all the sinus things!! Huh what a week it was… most eventful traveling experience of mine to this point.

And that’s just such a fun story to tell, BUT what I really wanna talk about is Israel. Wow, Israel was wonderful. The trip really was a dream. So many of us from the Institute got to go together and soak up the Bible in color. It was such a blessing to be able to go on the trip, with this community, and under the teaching of our own KI Pres, the man, the myth, the legend – Chancey.

It was so neat to be able to see so many places that I’ve read about all my life – to be in the actual Promised Land. To worship on a boat in the Sea of Galilee. To float in the Dead Sea. To hike along the caves where David hid from Saul. To ride camels in the desert of Jordan (most hilarious experience ever…) To step in the Red Sea. To throw stones across the Valley of Elah. To pray on the Mount of Olives.

We really got to see these places; the stories of the Old Testament and the Gospels; the lives of Abraham, Moses, the Israelite people… THE LIFE OF JESUS… come off the pages. Going into the trip, I was kinda blindly envisioning this magical ah-ha moment to sweep over me with every step. Ha, not the case. Israel is a modern nation these days… things don’t look exactly like they did two thousand years ago. Go figure. But, nonetheless, the landscape and landmarks remain and really blow your mind.

I think one of the coolest individual places for me to see was the Red Sea. That was a big moment for me to wake up with an awesome view of it out the window and go sit on top of the hotel.. huh.. and read back in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy about how God called Abraham to deliver His people from slavery in Egypt and to lead them into the Promised Land. Sitting there in the very land that had been promised from earlier in Genesis when God made His covenant with Abraham to be the father of many nations and to make his descendants great and blessed. Wow wow wow. Right there!

Egypt was a few miles down to my right. This beautiful Red Sea in front of me was the very body of water that the Lord split so that a dry path would be formed for the entire Hebrew nation to cross to safety. Incredible. But they would forget God’s faithfulness and fall into sin cycles over and over and over again, digressing into years and years of wandering in the desert.

Funny, I somehow imagined Israel to be some dry desert, not that beautiful of land… Well, I was wrong because of course God chose prime land for His own chosen people to possess. Israel is a beautiful place with lush vegetation and cool landscape for sure. It is surrounded by desert, though. This brought more clarity to the Israelites’ story for me. It made God’s sovereignty much more visible and evident as I could see what Moses wrote about. The Israelites’ wandering and sin cycles are our redemption story. I forget who my God is. I forget His faithfulness and goodness and constance of character. I choose my sin over and over, and wander in the wilderness of my own choices as I am pursued by a long-suffering Savior.

And something else that was super impactful for me was getting to walk among the Jewish people as they live their everyday life. I saw Romans 11 come to life. The Gospel went first to the Jews then to the Gentiles (non-Jews). Today, there are some Jewish people who are saved, having believed and placed their trust in the resurrected Messiah; however, many Jews have rejected the Truth and had their hearts hardened, eyes darkened, and ears closed to the Gospel. It’s crazy to me that the very chosen people of God, living in the very place where the Bible, the GOSPEL, took place, don’t get it. Yet, the Bible literally says that will be the case. It is crazy. But it’s incredibly accurate straight from Scripture. It’s disheartening that so many Israelite people living in the Holy Land are living under the Law, in bondage to the Law that Jesus Christ fulfilled RIGHT THERE, in that very place. But the Bible is clear that this will happen. And because so many hearts have been hardened, the Gentiles have the opportunity to be grafted in. To be grafted in refers to Gentiles being adopted into the family of God by way of unwarranted election – wild olive shoots grafted into the olive tree and nourished by the sap of the olive root.

Without the truth of Romans 11, grace would not extend to us… it’s humbling and so convicting. But grace extends to you and me as Gentiles, and also still to the Israelite people to repent and be brought back in. And branches that have been broken off can be grafted in again. It’s just crazy to see this evident in real life. God is so good and sovereign and full of grace and mercy. He is active in the details and desires that no one should perish but rather that all would be saved. Getting to be in the Holy Land for  (almost) a couple weeks deepened my love for the God who promised it and so much more for His people. I get to be His people. I’m adopted by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and that same salvation extends to you. We get to be grafted in!!! There is literally no greater truth to cling to.