The Depth of God's Love

   

            When we visited the Middle East, we were taken to a remarkable site in southern Jordan called Petra.  This was the home of a tribe of Arabs called the Nabataeans who raided the caravans of merchants who were going from Sheba to Israel.  It is a place with elaborate carvings on the mountains of Corinthian columns as the entry doors to tombs.  It has a long history.  It is also supposedly the place where Moses struck the rock and produced water for his hungry people when they had been in the desert for a long time without water. We rode down into the place on the backs of donkeys and saw the beauty of Petra from the beginning.  It was great to see such a place and it gave me a sense that God is continually present in this world, even when we aren’t very aware of that presence.

            One of the things that amazed me at Petra was the Kodak signs that adorned some of the tables of the people trying to sell things to the tourists.  Petra is one of the most popular tourist sites in Jordan and the local residents make some money selling souvenirs to the people who visit.  Petra also was a place with an elaborate water system, which helped the original residents of the place to fill their needs, which reflects Moses ability to strike the rock and receive water for the use of his people who were very thirsty.

            Our guide for this trip was Nancy Lapp, a retired archeologist who explored many sites all over the Middle East with her husband Paul.  She taught us a great deal about the places that we visited and about the religion that we all professed.  I thank God to this day that we had that trip and that we learned so much from visiting those remarkable places described in scripture that we read about all the time.

            Even though I had had a seminary education, being in the geographical presence of the places described in scripture had great meaning for me.  To travel from Galilee to Jerusalem and to see Nazareth and Bethlehem made a great difference for my education.  I was able to better understand what was said in the gospels and in Paul’s letters because of these travels. 

            Jesus came to us to teach us the extreme love of God.  He spent his time with us contradicting the religious leaders who constantly argued with him.  He told a great parable to show them the extreme of their religion.  He offered the story of the vineyard owner who had two sons.  He asked the first to go and to work in the vineyard and he refused, but later changed his mind and went.  The second son said that he would go and work, but didn’t go.  Jesus asked the leaders which of the sons obeyed the will of the father.  They correctly said that it was the first son.  Jesus said to them that the tax collectors and the prostitutes will go into the kingdom of heaven before them because John came full of righteousness and told them about God and they didn’t believe him; but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him.  Jesus went on to say that even when you saw it, you didn’t change your minds and believe him. 

            Jesus was telling these leaders about the difficulty that so many humans have with understanding the reality of the Kingdom of God.  This was certainly proved out in the arrest, condemnation and crucifixion of Jesus for again telling all of them the reality of what God has in mind for humanity.  God bless us when we believe and know that Jesus’ teaching was real for all of us in this world, and what our God wants for us all is our presence beside him in his Kingdom.

            Going to the Middle East helped me with this.  I was able to see the vastness of God’s work in this world and appreciate how deeply humanity has been loved through the ages.