New Year's in Israel.

Happy New Year!

These past few days have been amazing. Yesterday, we spent the morning at the Temple Mount, seeing the Western Wall, the Dome of the Rock, and Herodian architecture. It's so mindblowing to think that this was the place where the Temple once was stood. This was the place where God's Shekainah glory once dwelt - the actual manifestation of His presence. Wow.

Something that really struck me yesterday was reading the Psalm of Ascents while sitting on the steps leading to the Temple Mount. The Psalm of Ascents are found in Psalm 120-134. A worshipper of Yahweh would read one of these psalms as they approached the temple to offer a sacrifice to Yahweh. As he read, sang, and prayed these psalms, he would look up and be reminded of the greatness and mercy of Yahweh, and his own sin in light of God's goodness, and his need of God's mercy. I really love the psalms, and as our tour guide was talking about this process of worshippers preparing their hearts before offering a sacrifice to God, I realized my own need to prepare my heart before gathering for corporate worship.

Often times, I'm thinking about so many things before and during church - thinking about what music we're playing for the service, thinking about what I need to do for choir, thinking about things I need to do in general - that even though I am gathered in corporate worship, my heart is not even in it. I am learning alot about the way the Israelites intentionally prepared their heart for worship, and I need to do the same when I come to God, so that my heart would be focused on Him.

Today, we went to the Central Benjamin Plateau, Samaria, and Jericho seeing the locations of ancient cities where the Patriarchs walked, where the Israelites fought battles against their enemies, where so much Biblical history happened, seeing how God triumphs. Seeing all these different ruins made me think about a song that I actually wrote before going on the trip. Honestly, I wrote this song after Nate and Kyle wrote their song, and I felt inspired to write since they wrote a song. haha. But pretty much, most of the stuff that I'd been meditating on this past semester just spilled out of this song. After studying the prophets and seeing the judgment of God, and being evacuated from fires - the themes of judgment and fires have been in my thoughts. Now that I actually see the ruins of these judgments, it all seems to be coming full circle for me. So I leave you with the lyrics:

Chorus
Run, run from the destruction of the city
'Cause fire consumes both the living and the dead.
Flee, fast, far away from here
The flood will wash us away.

Look outside tonight
The sky shines bright
It blinds my eyes.
Don't stay in tonight.
The creepers will bite
There's no good-byes.

Chorus

Hold on tight
Run with all your might
There's so much to fear.
Don't look back
At the angry attack
Let's get out of here.

Chorus

After the fire is over,
We'll go back and see
The land that's laid to waste.
We'll dance in the moonlight
In the remains of the ruins
Of a faraway place.

Let's waltz on the rooftop,
Let's swing on the doorstep
That's no longer here.
There's no picket fences,
No nicely-trimmed lawns,
Only memories we held dear.

Chorus

I recorded a rough version of this, but Team Glasses will be coming out with a real demo after I get back from Israel. Ask me for it if you're interested.

Thanks for reading! Love you all!