Where are the pictures?

Many of you know how I obsess over photographs... and yes, I did take close to 3,000 photos while traveling in the Middle East last month.  So, where are all those pictures?  Most of them are simply stored on my computer.  But, I have uploaded some onto Facebook.

To view photos with more extensive captions about my trip to Israel, click here:  Israel

For photos of my three-day excursion into Jordan, click here:  Jordan Extension

Enjoy!

To Love, or Not to Love...

That really isn't the question.

Matthew 22:37–39 
Jesus said to him, 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'

1 John 3:16 
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

1 John 3:18 
Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

Clearly, God commands us to love.  First, we are called to love God.  Secondly, we are called to love others.  Practically speaking, this is not carried out through our words alone (although those do have a place), but through our actions of selfless service and in honesty and truthfulness.  

I understand that.  

But I want love to be perfect; selfishly, I want for it to satisfy me. Thus, when I am faced with the blaring fact that love is hard and requires sacrifice and risk, I want to run the opposite direction!  

In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis warns:

Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as “Careful! This might lead you to suffering.”

To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities.…

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

Am I willing to risk in order to love?
Am I willing to be obedient to God and choose to love?

My prayer is that God will strengthen me and give me the grace I need to step out and love.

One step at a time...
Rachel

Compassion at the Crossroads

Sit and soak it in. That was my goal in returning to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on that Saturday afternoon, January 15. As I sat by the alleged “tomb” of Jesus, I watched lines and lines of people waiting to worship before different religious artifacts – usually ones that are admittedly constructed and placed by human hands long after the event it signifies actually took place. So fervent. So passionate. So desperate to even trail a finger along said religious artifact, or even to catch a glimpse of it.

Personally, I am not drawn to a veneration of the site, or any object within it. Thus, for me to sit and simply watch this zoo of worshippers – pushing, elbowing, murmuring – was difficult. In no way was I able to understand these people or truly appreciate the significance of the site or praise and worship in this place. It was too full of people, too full of camera flashes, and too full of my own questions about these objects – a stone step, a piece of the wall, a lit candle, a niche...

I'm home now... and while my thoughts are still incredibly jumbled and I still have many questions, there was one major thing that struck me as I sat and reflected within the walls of the sanctuary. It was this:

God chose the most ordinary and desolate of lands – a place of rock and sand, of harsh weather, of poverty and scandal – to redeem His people. Yet, it was a place at the crossroads of the world, where the good news of His redemption could filtrate to everyone. Still, today, people from all around the globe come to remember the events that took place in this arena. They come in all kinds of states, with all kinds of baggage, and with all kinds of backgrounds. There's no knowing what it took – what sacrifices they made – for them to come. But come they did – and with fervent zeal.

If there is one thing God continues to teach me, it is to feel His compassion – to see people the way He sees them. In this place 2000 years ago, Jesus walked and talked and expressed His love and compassion towards people – needy people, not unlike the ones who shuffled before me on Saturday. Jesus did not passively feel compassion in the way I might think of it. He chose to act upon His compassion – coming to earth, reaching out to actually, physically touch those in need, living an ordinary life, dying on a cross, and rising victoriously.

And as I sat, I was convicted that He has called me to do the same. He has called me to live in and among multitudes of needy people here on this earth. He has called me to see those needs and respond with compassion. He has called me to die to my own selfishness and live completely sold out for Him.

One step at a time...

Rachel