If the sights and experiences of my travel
brought alive the word of God, my time in the community at the hostel I was
working at, Beit Immanuel, in Jaffa/Tel Aviv, made more real to me the Spirit
of God, and his presence among his people.
My work, which ranged from cleaning toilets to being receptionist and even chef one day (on which 60 people turned up, not entirely expectedly, for dinner!), was almost always made enjoyable by the knowledge that I was working for God and for the people around me, both guests and the community.
I could talk for hours of Beit Immanuel and Israel: my friends, the family atmosphere of the weekly Shabbat meal, water fights refined to an almost professional level, trips on the bus after a bombing the day before, hitchhiking in the desert, commercialised "Holy Sites", young, gun carrying soldiers - male and female, the geology of the Negev, amazing banana milkshakes, the politics of geography... the list of experiences goes on and on.
But instead, I'll end where I began, with the sun, its rays seemingly reaching across the whole of Israel, like the hand of God. If the glory of that sunrise in the Judean wilderness was but a pale shadow of what is to come when eternity in the presence of God (secured two thousand years ago for all who accept it) is fully revealed, then I know that I want to be a part of it.
My work, which ranged from cleaning toilets to being receptionist and even chef one day (on which 60 people turned up, not entirely expectedly, for dinner!), was almost always made enjoyable by the knowledge that I was working for God and for the people around me, both guests and the community.
I could talk for hours of Beit Immanuel and Israel: my friends, the family atmosphere of the weekly Shabbat meal, water fights refined to an almost professional level, trips on the bus after a bombing the day before, hitchhiking in the desert, commercialised "Holy Sites", young, gun carrying soldiers - male and female, the geology of the Negev, amazing banana milkshakes, the politics of geography... the list of experiences goes on and on.
But instead, I'll end where I began, with the sun, its rays seemingly reaching across the whole of Israel, like the hand of God. If the glory of that sunrise in the Judean wilderness was but a pale shadow of what is to come when eternity in the presence of God (secured two thousand years ago for all who accept it) is fully revealed, then I know that I want to be a part of it.