Project Holy Land

My older sister has always had good ideas.

She came to stay with the kids for the first half of our trip to Israel. I told her I would bring her something special from the Holy Land.

“Just bring me some dirt,” she said. “Some dirt where Jesus walked.”

Cheapest souvenir ever.

I hadn’t worked out all the details of how I was going to do this. Even once we got there, I never sat down and thought through exactly what I’d bring her. Which is why I’m completely certain that God used Ali to plant a seed that He watered and grew into what became Project Holy Land.

Each morning, I shoved a bunch of Ziploc baggies into my purse and every time we would stop somewhere cool, I’d sneak away and scoop several handfuls of ground into a bag. When we got back on the bus, I’d label each bag with a Sharpie.

I got home with twelve baggies of Holy Land.

As you can imagine, this added a significant amount of weight to my suitcase so we had to do some scrambling once we got to the airport. Thankfully, Brad’s bag was shockingly light so the contraband ended up in his suitcase.

(Every time a check in person asked him if any strangers had asked him to carry something for them in his bag, I half expected him to say. “Just my wife. She’s fairly strange, but she’s harmless. For the most part.”)

My body still can’t figure out what time zone we’re in and Tuesday morning, I was up around 5 AM. So I decided to work on my project.

I spread out all my supplies on the dining room table. The twelve baggies of ground, small corked bottles I bought from Hobby Lobby, a couple spoons and a funnel.

I looked critically at all the different colors and textures in front of me and pondered how I should arrange them.

The OCD part of me really wanted to put them in the order they were mentioned in the Bible. But several of them were so similar, I could tell they would not show up in their separate distinctiveness. Every piece was precious and needed to stand alone to be fully appreciated.

Then I considered putting them in chronological order of our trip and ran into the same problem. So I finally told my left brain to chill out and let my right brain take over. The only way to fully appreciate each layer would be to arrange them by color and contrast.

After several minutes of shuffling the baggies around, I came up with an order I was satisfied with. I sat down and uncorked the first bottle.

First was the dark soil of the Mount of Beatitudes, where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. A couple of spoonfuls into the funnel. The soil was chunky and took a little work to get into the bottle. A few rocks and twigs were caught by the funnel and I put them aside.

Next were the tiny pebbles from a stream in En Gedi, where David hid from King Saul in the mountainous caves and wrote many of the psalms. I smiled when I opened the bag and found the rocks still wet. In this case, the funnel was useless to me. I had to carefully pour them into the bottle by hand.

I’ve become a very tactile person as I’ve grown up. Physical touch has always been one of my love languages and my family and friends know to expect me to hug, play with their hair, grab their arm or hand for emphasis.

Now I find I need to touch everything. The ground when I got to Haiti. Everything we saw in Israel. The floor of the cell where Jesus was imprisoned before His crucifixion. The manger. The dry sides of what used to be the pool of Bethesda. The Western Wall. (It’s no mystery how I caught such a bad cold.)

And this need was satisfied again as I carefully scooped the sticky red dirt of Bethlehem into the bottle with my fingers. I pored over each granule like an old-timey apothecary mixing potions.

Next came the gray earth of Nazareth. Dry and dusty, the dust that Jesus shook off His feet when His own hometown rejected Him. He moved on to Capernaum and so did I. Dark dirt which led down to the Sea of Galilee. There was no easy way to get to the water, but I would not be deterred until my hands and feet were in the cold, clear sea that Jesus walked on.

Then the light gray sand of Qumran, the desert where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the 1950s, proving the authenticity of the Old Testament. Then darker gray ground from the dry pool of Bethesda where Jesus asked the invalid, “Do you want to get well?”

The red sand from the Dead Sea slid through the funnel easily. The sparse dry leaves from the Garden of Gethsemane also had to gently be pushed through by hand. And then I came to the baggie containing the bank of the Jordan River.

The golfball-sized chunks of clay were hard and unyielding. I tried to squeeze them into smaller chunks with my hands, but they wouldn’t cooperate. I got up, went into the closet and pulled out a hammer. And as soon as I brought the first swing down on the bag to crush its contents, a startling realization whispered through my mind.

This is your life.

I paused, put the hammer down and surveyed my workspace.

I had made quite a mess. Various earth spilled all over the table. A pile of rocks and twigs that didn’t make it through the funnel. The partially-filled bottle.

I thought of how I had carefully arranged the order of appearance of each element. The different ways I had to work each one into the bottle. Finally having to crush some pieces to make them fit.

This WAS my life. And this is how God works. Deliberately arranging events to be best displayed in me. Delicately easing some pieces in, forcing some through the funnel, crushing others so He could work with them.

I raised the hammer again and brought it down on the chunks of riverbank. It was no longer just random breaking. It was a purposeful crushing, that those pieces might be displayed for others to see.

The Mount of Olives was soft, black soil that slid easily into the bottle. I topped my creation off with the crushed seashells of the Mediterranean Sea of Caesarea, the port where all three of Paul’s missionary journeys began.

I replaced the cork firmly and admired what I had made. And it was very good.

I started over with the next bottle, thinking of God forming Adam by the dust of the ground with His own hands. That was a very personal, tactile experience as well.

And to God, it’s all personal. And purposeful.

Every time He drops the hammer on a stubborn chunk of our lives. Every time soft sand of obedience runs through His fingers. The unexpected beauty of a complete, tiny seashell, just for a smile.

I completed eight bottles that morning and moved them over to the counter so I could clean up my mess. All the spilled dirt ran together as I swept it into my hand. Instead of walking it over to the trash can like I intended, I sighed and slid it into a spare baggie. Just couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. It was still precious.

I began to gather the discarded stones and twigs and also attempted to throw them away, but to no avail. The disciples gathered all the leftovers after Jesus fed the five thousand. Nothing was wasted. These were from the Holy Land. And they mattered too.

I saved them as well, maybe for another project down the road. Some people I know will never see where the great heroes of the Christian faith and our Savior Himself lived. They would be thrilled to have a small rock collection from Israel.

It all matters.

Every tragedy, every win, every setback, every surprise. It all counts and it all matters.

God knows exactly what the finished product of my life looks like. But until the cork is secured on my days, I pray that I will trust His plan and believe Him for a masterpiece.