Tuesday, December 8, 2009

THE MIDDLE EAST- Barely Touching The Surface Of Understanding

As we look back on the many places we have been on our Sabbatical, one place that stands out for us was our time in the Middle East. We arrived with an elementary knowledge of the Middle East and we find ourselves leaving with desire, actually a passion to want to know more.

We were raised with knowledge of Bible stories and knew as children about places like Bethlehem, Nazareth, Egypt, the Red Sea and other places in that area. As children, we conjure up images of these places and we often retain those images even as adults. In out minds, it is hard to connect the events and places with each other and to realize how one impacted the other. The maps we find in the back of our Bibles are often not very helpful because the names and borders are hard to relate to current times. Even those who have studied the Bible in depth have a difficult time connecting the hard to pronounce names and who was king of what with the events that continue to shape the current and future of the area.

The understanding of the geography and how things are connected is the easy part; the political events over the centuries is much more intriguing. Our first taste of it was when we were in Lebanon after we told a very well educated man that we were going to Israel, he said that on any map you find in Lebanon that shows that area, it will not show Israel (I am not sure he even said the word Israel), it will show a border and the area will be marked P.O.T. standing for Palestine Occupied Territory.

When we were in Jerusalem and went to Bethlehem, we took the Arab bus to get there. On the way we crossed through a border because we were entering Palestine. Bethlehem is in Palestine, which has its own flag, postal system and government; all contained in the State of Israel. When we went back to Jerusalem, we had to get off the bus and show our passports to be allowed to continue home. It would be like Clovis declaring themselves a separate country and the border with Fresno would become an international crossing.

The Dome of the Rock Temple Square to the Jews, their most holy place. The exact same place is the third most holy place for Muslims and has a beautiful Mosque covering the rock. The Church of the Holy Sepulture, marking where Jesus was crucified is obviously very holy for the Christianss. But, a Muslim family opens and closes these gates each morning and each evening as they have held the keys to the Church for centuries. Both of these holy places are within the wall of the Old City of Jerusalem and a short walking distance from each other. A very delicate balance is maintained, to say the least.

These are just small examples of the complexity of the Middle East. This blog is just to say that we have both been smittened with a desire to study and understand how these pieces of this puzzle have shifted over the centuries and how they affect us vitally in today’s world.

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