The Beauty of Israel

In the Old Testament we read that Israel was "the land of milk and honey."  God said it, Abraham believed it, the Jewish people lived it.  But when I tried to picture Israel in my mind what I saw was the desert, The Dead Sea, the mountains that are pure rock. I'm not sure why that's all that I saw but I do know that I was wrong.  Really, really wrong.  Israel is both lush and arid.  It is inviting and it is desolate.  But no matter which part I was in, it was beautiful.

 The flowers are amazing:

Sometimes they appear, just two or three, in the most unlikely places.  On the side of the highway, beside a sign pointing the way to Bethlehem, a few flowers peak out of the grass.  Cascading over a rock wall on a narrow street going into the Old City they remind me of that old saying, "bloom where you are planted."  In many places they weren't planted...they were happenstance.  A seed dropped by a bird perhaps.  But out of the dry ground they sprouted and they persevered.  Much like the people of that land.  

Some of the beauty is man made:

These pictures are unedited and my skills aren't good...an understatement.  But you can see the amazing talent that has been given to this land over the centuries.  Even in the very poorest of villages the churches were beautiful and were filled with art that took my breath away.

Even the desolate parts are beautiful:

 But the real beauty lies in this:

Jesus came.  He was baptized in the Jordan River.

He died and He was laid in a tomb.

But He's not there in that tomb any more.