Qumran.

The fact that we were 1500 feet below sea level did absolutely nothing to alleviate the wheezing caused by pushing my very out of shape body into doing things that no one should ever do. Scaling the side of this seemingly vertical rock wall at a breakneck pace in the 110 degree heat is not something I would normally call a good time. We paused at the mouth of a cave, gasping for breath and sucking down water that the desert sun had heated to the point of boiling. If I had stuck a tea bag in my water bottle, I could be drinking tea in a matter of seconds. However, the temperature of the water did nothing to phase me – the usually highly sensitive buds on my tounge were too enamored with the moisture to care that it was about 50 degrees warmer than it should have been.

As we stood there waiting for the stragglers to make it up, I gazed into the cave where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls. That should have shocked me. I should have had my camera out, taking a thousand pictures to document that moment, that place. But after a week of countless experiences like that one, I was finally over trying to fit the world inside a picture frame. I snapped one quick photo, just to have something to show everyone at home. But I knew that those experiences were being burned into my heart. Pictures truly were not necessary.

We took off again before my body had recovered – it wasn’t too many more scrambling steps before my calves were screaming again. I finally stumbled to the top. There were thorns inside my shoe, the beginnings of a blister, incredibly sore muscles, and the ever present wheezing.

But it was worth it.

I was surrounded by a beauty I'd never seen before. It was unpolished beauty – the kind you have to stare at for a while before you see it. The dust in the air combined with the evening light to cover everything with a hazy, golden glow. The earth there is brown, shades of tan and red and chocolate. The green is in patchworks, the grey of the olive trees contrasting with the sage of the bushes and the dark green of the cyprus. And the water that was below us is strange in its salty, deadly blue. But it is beautiful. Beautiful in its imperfection, in its difference from any beauty I have ever known before. And as I stood there, pouring sweat and covered in dust, I heard the voice of God in the wind. “Thank you,” he whispered, “thank you for coming and seeing and smelling and feeling this place.”

And I shouted into the wind, for all the world to hear, that the Lord is my God, the Lord alone. Shema, Israel!



It was all worth it.