I was fortunate enough to be a part of Cairn’s ‘13-’14 Israel and Archaeology FYP cohort.  We went to Israel as part of our studies, a sort of reward for and culmination of what we’d been learning all year.

Now, with experiences as intense as the FYPs, honest reviews are hard to come by.  If you wait much longer than a year to ask someone how it went, all memory becomes obscured in the chocolate pudding of nostalgia.

My expiration date is fast approaching.  But since, as I write this, my junior year has yet to begin, hopefully you’ll believe most of what I have to say.

I can roughly divide my experience in Israel into three stages.

Stage I: “I’M IN ISRAEL!!!”

This I yelled to the wind, and to anyone listening.

“You’re a dork,” retorted my classmate Erin.

Well, she wasn’t wrong.  But I didn’t care what Erin or anyone else had to say.  This was our first real night of touring the Holy Land, and I was pumped.  We were standing where they tried to throw Jesus off a cliff!  And even though Erin looked like she was about to do the same to me, it still wouldn’t have bursted my bubble.  Because I was in the stage of Spontaneous Euphoria.

If you encounter Spontaneous Euphoria while in Israel, know that it can strike anytime, anywhere.  You don’t have to be looking at something cool.  You could be lying in your hotel bed watching Israeli sitcoms, applying sunblock on the sidewalk, or folding your underwear.  It doesn’t matter what you’re doing because YOU’RE IN ISRAEL!  This is the place you’ve read stories about all your life, and now you’re actually here.  It’s like being in Middle Earth, right?

Stage II: “It’s just a big rock.”

That’s what I thought as I stood on Mount Carmel.  I mean, sure, thousands of years ago, God’s spirit had sent an consuming heaven-fire, but the place had since lost its edge.

I expected the physical features of Israel to have some kind of transcendent power.  But the Valley of Elah, where David fought Goliath?  It’s an unassuming grassy patch.  We passed it on our tour bus.  The Jordan river is a muddy stream, and the  mountains are really hard to tell apart because Mount Carmel?  Just a big ol’ rock.  Like the rest of them.  I call this stage Depressed Disenchantment.

I was largely unaffected by my surroundings.  With this apathy came waves of quiet guilt.  What was wrong with me?  Was I not spiritually-minded enough?  Not paying enough attention to my surroundings?  Why did Israel just seem like a normal place?

Stage III: Because it is.

The guilt continued for a few days, but in its wake came Acceptance (it’s always nice when that’s the last stage, isn’t it?).  Parts of Israel were awe-inspiring, breathtaking, and spiritually poignant.  But on the whole?  There are nicer places to visit.

But that’s kind of the point.  God chose to work out his plan of Redemption here.  Here, in this rocky strip of land the size of New Jersey, here walked the Savior.  And the dust around him did not glow.  There was nothing ethereal about the way he walked, sweated, or spat.  The Holy Land isn’t holy.  It’s the stuff that happened here.

Even if you never go to Israel, I hope this article has taught you something.  I hope you can learn to love things, people, and places as they are, not as you hoped they’d be.  That girl you finally got the nerve to ask out?  That book you’ve been meaning to read?  That college you just started?  Flawed and incomplete, all.  But if you don’t take the time to learn what they are, you’ll never appreciate what they could be.

As C.S. Lewis writes, “[T]hrills come at the beginning and do not last […] Let the thrill go […] and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time”.

Appreciate the imperfect.  Christ did.  May He continue to live in us as we walk and sweat and spit with one another.  Just try not to spit unless you have to.

I think this picture really ties the article together.  Yes, those are ancient Roman toilets.