At The Red Sea

Well, this isn’t really going to be a blog…I’m way too jetlagged to say anything very intelligent…I’m just checking in. Peri and I are sitting by the pool at the Hilton Queen of Sheba Hotel on the Red Sea in Eilat, Israel waiting for our room to get ready. We’ve been traveling for 22 hours and we’re a little bit tired, but happy. I didn’t sleep on the plane so I’ve been up for…a long time (I’m too tired to figure it out), and since it’s now 3:00 in the afternoon on Tuesday here, I need to stay up till this evening.

Traveler’s Tale: After flying all night from New York to Tel Aviv we transferred to the domestic airport to catch our flight to Eilat. At the domestic airport we were informed by Israeli security that our travel itinerary is a bit unusual (New York…Tel Aviv…Eliat…Egypt…Eliat…Tel Aviv…Athens…Tel Aviv) so they needed to give us a bit extra scrutiny. This entailed 45 minutes of questioning. No kidding. One of the problems was I couldn’t convince them that I was a pastor. How about that? They wanted some sort of clergy photo identity card. Hahaha!! As if I would have something like that. And we didn’t have anything with us…no church bulletins or brochures or anything. At one point I pulled out my well-worn, much underlined and annotated bible and tried to convince them that this had to be the bible of a pastor. Finally a phone call to our Israeli tour operator, Gadi Cohen, cleared things up. It was funny. 25 years of full-time pastoral ministry and I couldn’t convince Israeli security that I was a pastor!

Well, tomorrow morning we leave the hotel at 7:30 to cross the border into Egypt and through the Sinai desert to the Mountain of God (Mount Horeb/Sinai). I have an appointment, you know.

BZ

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the Angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.” So when the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then He said, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” Moreover He said, “I am the God of your father — the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. -Exodus 3:1-7