climbing mount nebo
"I don't think I like this, Mom!" My son shouts as we veer around a hairpin turn up a steep slope. Several feet away from the side of the road, the ground drops off into a sheer cliff, giving way to a spectacular valley of muted earth tones. Majestic slopes of tan and gray with shadowy contours spread across our view. Occasionally, our eyes are relieved with cool green-- a wide-spreading tree, a few scrub bushes dotting what appears to be the remains of a riverbed long ago.
We are climbing Mount Nebo.
My sweetheart deftly turns the wheel as the road takes another hairpin turn. Now the ground around us grows in breadth, craggy, white sandstone outcroppings spreading out in this desert place. The car's temperature gauge reads 107 degrees. We pass a makeshift tent of light tarps spread taut across a broad frame making a rectangular tent. The front is open, but no one appears to be home. Outside the Bedouin dwelling, a loose crowd of goats and sheet shuffle about the dusty earth.
Every now and then, tufts of grey-green scrub brush crop up. Then a camel or two. We slow down to gawk at the animal, having never before seen one out of the confines of a plush zoo habitat. This one seems curious and starts to lope towards our car. We are on a blind turn and so we leave before the creature makes it to us.
Are we really here? Are we really in the very same place where the Israelites, God's beloved people, wandered aimlessly for forty years in pursuit of His best, the Promised Land?
Our destination is the very place Moses ascended as a consolation prize, having been disqualified from entering the land himself. This time, God told him to speak to the rock and it would gush forth water. Perhaps Moses, tired and agitated from years of wandering and still sore from the first incident when the people complained so much that God had him hit another such rock, just defaulted to what he knew best. But it wasn't he who would provide the water for the people. And God told him to speak to the rock, not hit it.
Now, a church sits upon the place where ascetics have, for hundreds of years, commemorated the place where the great prophet Moses saw the land of milk and honey from a distance, then died. A part of me feels that this was too harsh. After all, Moses was called God's friend. He was even given the privilege of seeing God-- if even from the back. Yet it says in scripture that even when he died at age 120, his eyesight was strong, as was his body.
God took him home, to Himself.
And so we walk up the paved path towards an excavated mosaic floor dating to the 4th century A.D. and see a bronze snake in the shape of a cross. Created by Italian sculptors in preparation for Pope John Paul II's visit, the bronze snake again reminds us of those who, in seeing so much of their lack, their discomfort, lost sight of what would give them life. Look up, out of your misery, away from the ache of empty stomachs and unfulfilled dreams...look to the One who Himself is living water...and you will live!
I look down at my tall girl's sandaled feet. They are covered with a thin film of greyish-white dirt. My three year old shuffles along the trail to the view that we have climbed this mountain, by car and by foot, to see. The day is hazy, so as we perch along the wall and take cues from the placard showing distances to Jericho, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea-- we need to use some imagination. It is enough. The pale glow of the sea spread across much of the left and Jericho is now a modern city.
Later, we can see across the plains to the two tall, black buildings that stand near our new home in Amman. We are that close to Mt. Nebo. On the way down, we recall that we are walking in what was once Moab, home of Ruth, later wife of Boaz, whose blood line continued down to Christ.
Soli Deo Gloria...
We are climbing Mount Nebo.
My sweetheart deftly turns the wheel as the road takes another hairpin turn. Now the ground around us grows in breadth, craggy, white sandstone outcroppings spreading out in this desert place. The car's temperature gauge reads 107 degrees. We pass a makeshift tent of light tarps spread taut across a broad frame making a rectangular tent. The front is open, but no one appears to be home. Outside the Bedouin dwelling, a loose crowd of goats and sheet shuffle about the dusty earth.
Every now and then, tufts of grey-green scrub brush crop up. Then a camel or two. We slow down to gawk at the animal, having never before seen one out of the confines of a plush zoo habitat. This one seems curious and starts to lope towards our car. We are on a blind turn and so we leave before the creature makes it to us.
Are we really here? Are we really in the very same place where the Israelites, God's beloved people, wandered aimlessly for forty years in pursuit of His best, the Promised Land?
Our destination is the very place Moses ascended as a consolation prize, having been disqualified from entering the land himself. This time, God told him to speak to the rock and it would gush forth water. Perhaps Moses, tired and agitated from years of wandering and still sore from the first incident when the people complained so much that God had him hit another such rock, just defaulted to what he knew best. But it wasn't he who would provide the water for the people. And God told him to speak to the rock, not hit it.
Now, a church sits upon the place where ascetics have, for hundreds of years, commemorated the place where the great prophet Moses saw the land of milk and honey from a distance, then died. A part of me feels that this was too harsh. After all, Moses was called God's friend. He was even given the privilege of seeing God-- if even from the back. Yet it says in scripture that even when he died at age 120, his eyesight was strong, as was his body.
God took him home, to Himself.
And so we walk up the paved path towards an excavated mosaic floor dating to the 4th century A.D. and see a bronze snake in the shape of a cross. Created by Italian sculptors in preparation for Pope John Paul II's visit, the bronze snake again reminds us of those who, in seeing so much of their lack, their discomfort, lost sight of what would give them life. Look up, out of your misery, away from the ache of empty stomachs and unfulfilled dreams...look to the One who Himself is living water...and you will live!
I look down at my tall girl's sandaled feet. They are covered with a thin film of greyish-white dirt. My three year old shuffles along the trail to the view that we have climbed this mountain, by car and by foot, to see. The day is hazy, so as we perch along the wall and take cues from the placard showing distances to Jericho, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea-- we need to use some imagination. It is enough. The pale glow of the sea spread across much of the left and Jericho is now a modern city.
Later, we can see across the plains to the two tall, black buildings that stand near our new home in Amman. We are that close to Mt. Nebo. On the way down, we recall that we are walking in what was once Moab, home of Ruth, later wife of Boaz, whose blood line continued down to Christ.
Soli Deo Gloria...
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