All my love.

God truly keeps His promises. 

A year and a half ago, and still He's calling me deeper. 

Never relenting. 

A thirst that can only ever truly be quenched in Him.

And still the promise,

of the discovery of the depths that lie ahead...

Mutti celebrates 59years

When your loved one's live far away then one tends to get more sentimental about them.
It was my mom's birthday this past weekend, a picture poem was the best way of sending my longings and wishes to her.

Here are a few snippets from the visual poem...

In the Garden

Some images from a prayer walk at the Union Buildings, Pretoria this morning. 

Take time to...

walk with Him

talk with Him

see and listen

and be filled with hope.

Flight

When the written black and white
The appearance of hope penned onto paper
No longer limited to page
In an instant takes flight...

In this awakening of sight
All buried dreams
too long bound within my mind
are awoken, pierced from dark to light.

No longer paper bound
from origin they were meant to be found.

Breaking the silence

A journal entry inspired by 

Isaiah 26.

Israel - the aftermath

How do you eat an elephant? 

One bite at a time. Starting with the feet of course.... 

I've sorted through my foot photo's :)

Silly as it may sound, going through these photo's has given me a good 'grounding' (pun intended) for my otherwise over saturated headspace. Every photo is a reminder of the sights, sounds, tempretures, thoughts and experiences I had. Thus the view from my size 7 foot has become the starting point for unraveling the reflections...   


Most people ask me, very optimistically, "So what was your most memorable/favourite highlight of the trip?" Ummmm... right there, you've just found a great candidate question for a the 'Impossible Quiz 2012'. Simply not possible. There are many highlights, all carrying their own story and memory. It's like asking a mother to choose her favourite child - just not impossible (cruel in fact ;) )  

The thing about Israel that stands out and makes it such a unique travel destination is that it exposes one to a view of the world through an overwhelming physical portrayal of history. Strata upon strata, site upon site, you're confronted with evidence of years of civilisations, wars, famines, injustices, celebrations, people's search for God... Over and over confronted with this reality - "My world, my life, my reality is so small, so insignificant, in comparison to the thousands of years, and the hundreds of different stories that have happened inside the lives of millions of people in every generation... And all that really matters, all that literally physically stands at the end of it all is GOD. Even in the civilisations before Christ, before Moses, it's consistently obvious - they were all looking for and worshipping something. The relics, fallen pillars, flattened walls and empty buildings are a reminder of a fading earth given for a short period to mortal bodies. This poses the question, does anything ever really remain? Is there anything worth building towards? 

Matthew 6: 19-21

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

The reality of our fleeting lives here on earth, changes one's perspective dramatically. 
This life: My dreams. My preferences. My pursuits... my, my, my - How can it be about 'me' when there have been, and will be so many more? It's not about me. It can't be.

Yet in every 'me' there is a God who cares, knows, and has a plan for every one of them/us. Shucks! That leaves me flipped over and dumbstruck on a whole new level. 

God is so much bigger than what we can get our heads around. We can't ever, compete. Still, He wants a relationship with us. So much so that He sent His son to walk this earth, live here, work here, learn here, dwell here...why? So that He could bridge the immeasureable gap between man and God. To be the perfect sacrifice and bridge the gap, so as to be in relationship with us. That of course is the other reality of being in Israel which is overwhelming... to walk on the land and visit the places where Jesus taught, lived, worked and ministered. 

That God, would place Himself on earth? Somewhere in his footsteps I find the map to plotting my own. We are called to live like Jesus did. A King, yet not demanding His Kingly rights. His value lay in who He was, not how people treated Him. He humbled Himself in taking the form and bodily limits of man, while being in nature God. He choose to hang, live, talk and be on earth. (Phillipians 2) He came for the humble, the poor, the sick, the desperate, and even those who are rich but honest enough to see that they have nothing if not God. God on earth, for a bigger purpose than what we could measure in earthly terms. Jesus gives our fleeting earthly reality an eternal anchor.

 Isaiah 40: 6-8 

A voice says, "Cry!"And I said "What shall I cry?"

All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; 

surely the people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

The aftermath of Israel lingers longer than what I imagined... 

One photo album at a time, one day entry at a time - still not sure I'll ever really get my head around it all but I'll keep sharing non the less. 

Two vagabonds in Israel

Ok so… 

we’ll have to ignore the fact that I’ve missed about a week of blogging and choose the less pressured option of starting from the ‘now’ and working my way back slowly. (Else I’ll never start!) Going back into the archives of my memory will definatly be good, since at this rate I’m in need of a method to help me come to terms with the trip so far. It has been saturated with experiences, history and sights that have blown me away. Writing will be a good way of coming to grips with the trip thus far!  

Our legendary little Avis  Nissan, keeping us mobile.

Lunch in Jerusalem in the Islamic market.

Supper at a very very good restaurant in Rosh Pina. Terrific tapas!

Dead sea in style. (Please appreciate the floating Korean in the background. Classic, this makes me smile!)

Petra.

Our B&B in Eilat had a tiny tiny braai. Of course we made the most of it and 'smoked' a chicken. Proudly SA! (no boerewors in Israel I;m afraid, so chicken it was.)  

Swimming in the Sea of Galilee - glee! 

Incredible ice cream store 'Aldo' we discovered this evening... 

Really delicious supper this evening in Zichron Ya'achov.  

Here’s what the two Avis vagabonds have been up to:

The last three days in Jerusalem area were spent at Masada, the Dead Sea, the Old City (the list here is long enough so we’ll leave it for now), Israel Museum, Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum) and many little streets and café’s.

We then took the bus through the En Gedi desert to the southern tip of the country to the coastal town of Eilat. Here we spent three days snorkelling, visiting the coral Aquarium, scuba diving! (smiley face space necessary right here) as well as a day trip over the Jordan border to visit the ancient city of Petra… no words could possibly do justice, but I’ll try when I have the pictures to accompany my otherwise destined to be useless attempt.

Thereafter we took the bus back to Jerusalem and then further north to Afula where we hired an Avis car for the second leg of our trip. Hiring our own car has been the best move! It changes the dynamics of one’s trip completely, so freeing to set your own pace and not be restraint by tours or time constrains. We drove north to the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee and then slowly made our way from the south of the sea to the to north where we stayed in a little city called Zefat. Zefat is situated on the highest mountain (close to Mt Meron) in Israel so we had a completely new view of Isreal. Driving from there in and around Galilee and the Golan Heights is very easy and pretty central. (Technically speaking almost any place in Israel is pretty central since it’s a really small country, about the size of Kruger National Park. Yip, that small!) We spent 3 days in Zefat, using it as our base to explore the Galilean area. 

Today we drove towards the west, and are now staying in the sweetest little town called Zichron Ya’akov. It’s about 5km from the Mediterranean Sea, and the town itself has the most beautiful pebbled streets, café’s and artist vibe. We plan on spending the next two days exploring the Mediterranean coast and then heading down to the cosmopolitan energetic city of Tel Aviv on Friday, until we leave on Sunday evening.

So, only four days of our pilgrimage left, then we head back to South Africa. Going to soak up and embrace every moment and of course keep you posted, slowly but surely one blog at a time…

{ Even vagabonds long for home - sending all our love!}

View From Above

On arrival to the city of Jerusalem, most of the tour guides and travel books suggest one does the 'Ramparts Walk' as your first visitors orientation stop. It's a circumference walk circling the old city from the height of the wall edge - any photographer or secret spy's dream! 

I'll be open enough to admit that I enjoyed every minute of seeking sneaky little shots of the unaware victim below. Verging slightly on voyeurism I know... but made for some great pics! Hidden in the background, unnoticed, capturing a scene no one else is aware of and finding the interesting in the every day - my favourite type of shoot in every way! 

Here are some shots of the Old City of Jerusalem, peering in...

The ordinary things give one a pretty good idea of the city, it's people, and the day to day realities of the city...

Hope it you enjoyed the spy angle like I did ;)

Discovering Jerusalem

How do I do justice to this city in a humble little blog? Here I am sitting attempting to sum up my experience of Jerusalem the Old City... can't.

My optimistic come back to this dire fact will be - to share my thoughts and a few pictures anyway, and hope that some of the impressions will leave you with a better picture of the city and it's stories. There are so many years (3800 years to be closer to fact) of history. Not only are layers in the form of thousands of years but added to this are the different religions and nations that have had their stories overlap and unfold in this one city. The most important fact for me is that the city holds the centre focus of origin, separately, for three major faiths - Judaism, Islam and Christianity. This makes for a very interesting tension and fragile ownership regarding land, religous spots and 'his'stories. It's a complex network of stories, and every one has their own version...and that's what makes it so dynamic. (for lack of a better word. Can't find an apt adjective?) There's something about Jerusalem that draws so many different people.

It drew me too... here's why.

Being of the Christian faith, my natural pull has been to visit the birth place, home, ministry and burial place of Jesus. Not only the New Testament but the old too. Jerusalem was the home of King David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Esther...the list continues. There are a lot, millions, of pilgrims every year that come for the same reason. Searching to know more and find their God within the history of this city. The archeological findings, facts, relics, contexts, timelines, traditions, potential 'holy sites', all of the above can be found here. But, the search is really, if we honest with ourselves a whole lot deeper than the physical insignificant little spot on the map.

This, in a nutshell is, exactly what being in Jerusalem is opening my eyes too.
No salvation or righteousness can be found in the physical, in a temple, on a holy object or in the facts of history. However, it does teach and leads us into the classroom of finding...

I have found Jesus in the people I have met. The Palestinian Nasser family, the American Jewish family we meet for supper every night and share stories with, the street beggar who reflects my apathy in his eyes, the girl soldier who serves in the IDF with pride, the desperate Catholic woman pushing me flat in order to reach the rock to pray on... everyone is searching and Jesus came down to them, spoke here, ate here, rested here, taught, slept, laughed, cried, suffered - He came to answer every face I've seen.

I've also found him in the places. The dry wilderness with no life in sight, the spring flowers creeping their way up cracked pavement, the squashed taxi with no room to move, the open evening sky with the Old Walls surrounding me, the olive tree which I imagined to be His cover in prayer, the stillness of my room. I have found him in Jerusalem.

The true meaning and spiritual significance of Jerusalem lies in embracing and opening ones eyes to the 'realness' of this city, not the super-spiritual, religous customs, gold decorated temples or slick words. The opposite. The honest, the real, the authentic, the harsh, the human - the harder way.  Jesus, God, chose to dwell here. In this reality - I find I am being shocked and amazed all over again - God came down to earth and walked here. He is here. In judea, Samaria, Egypt, Ireland, Pretoria, Sunnyside... to the ends of the earth. His physical being in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, has meaning for us all across the world.

I have loved every moment of discovering Jerusalem! To see the city, smell the air, imagine (I've been doing a lot if this, especially when most of the sites are either covered in gold or the 'rubble' of an archeology site:) and match up the stories of the Bible with the physical sites. My purpose however is not to find purpose. Discovering Jerusalem, learning of her history and learning of her reality now, is done with the purpose of allowing God to open my eyes to our (humanities) past, present and future purposes...which somehow are magnified in this small yet majestic city of Jerusalem. 

My dad and I found this corner spot in the shade close to Lions Gate inside the Old City. We made it our 'office' on the first day and booked day trips and made calls from here. We've for some or other reason gone back twice again to discuss logistics or regather our thoughts (creatures of habit :) So this random corner has officially received the name 'The office'.  

Standing at the Mount of Olives view point on our first day to the Old City. 

This is one of the best  and also most typically famous views of the city.