Shalom, Roanoke Valley! I report to you from our smartly appointed hotel room in Jerusalem’s Ben Panorama Hotel with Encouraging Words from the beautiful land of Israel.My internal clock continues to lag behind the El Al jet that delivered us here, and I’m trying desperately to remember my “right” from my “left” during our tour group’s military line formation exercises (so that we might remain as one unit to safely maneuver throughout the land)!
Upon my physical return to the Roanoke Valley, I plan to heap upon you gifts of substance, gifts from this land of milk and honey that you can touch and taste: Possibly a box of Kosherly-covered-with-chocolate cherries; or a serene prayer shawl, woven with the seed of the flax into the fur coat of the lamb; or an ornament carved from the roots of the olive tree whose ancestral tree reads like the Index of the Holy Bible; or maybe a tiny flask filled with the oil pressed from its fruit.
I will also offer you gifts of the spirit: A spoken message of chapter and verse, to give you the essence of the life I received as I read the scripting wand of the wind waving in the Middle-Easterly painted horse’s mane, riding round and round on the carousel of Scripture. Or perhaps a PowerPoint presentation of my photograph pilgrimage to the Promised Land, in which one particular snapshot may inspire you to recreate for yourself, the scene, in oils, on canvas, with a brush. Or a fleck of wet stone pricked from the Westerly Wall while calling out your name, and it cried tears for you and your pain.
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