Pilgrimage (4 page)

As I continue to tour the many buildings on this flat mountaintop, I begin to see that Herod had no intention of
barricading himself inside an austere fortress. Masada has watchtowers and a thick wall around the perimeter of the mountaintop, but it also has every comfort that a decadent king might desire: a Roman-style bathhouse with frescoed walls; two palaces complete with bathtubs and mosaic floors; and even a private swimming pool. I hike down a series of stairs and walkways for a tour of Herod’s northern palace. It is constructed on three terraces that hang precipitously off the prow of this ship-shaped mountain, reminding me of the young couple in the movie
Titanic
. The beautifully decorated rooms are strategically placed to catch the evening breezes as Herod gazed out at the Dead Sea in the distance. The spectacular “I’m-king-of-the-world” view also enabled him to see his enemies approaching.

Herod never had to flee to Masada to escape from his enemies, but a small remnant of Jewish patriots did. They climbed Masada with their families to escape from the Roman armies after Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed. The Romans had slaughtered large numbers of their fellow Jews and carried off the rest into slavery. But thanks to Herod’s stockpiles of food and water, the refugees were able to hide on Masada for several years. They were safe here, secure. Who would bother with the last few Jewish stragglers in the middle of a remote desert?

The Romans would. They were as fanatical about stamping out every last enemy as Herod had been, and they sent the Tenth Legion to besiege Masada. As I look down from the top, I can still see the neatly squared-off Roman encampments far below where the soldiers bivouacked. My stomach does a little turn, wondering how the Jewish families felt as they also looked down, knowing they were surrounded by well-armed, well-trained soldiers. The relentless enemy left
them no escape, no option except surrender—and every man on Masada knew what the Romans would do to their wives and children if they did. We walk around to the western side of the fortress to see the man-made siege ramp that the Romans constructed to enable their soldiers to storm the fortress without using the Snake Path. They used captured Jewish slaves to build the ramp, knowing that Masada’s defenders wouldn’t attack their own people. I imagine the refugees’ despair growing day after day along with the ramp.

We sit down in the ruins of Masada’s synagogue to hear the rest of the story. When the ramp was completed and the Roman invasion was imminent, the remaining 960 Jewish refugees gathered here in the synagogue on the final night and made a suicide pact, choosing to die rather than watch their families be abused and enslaved by the Romans. The archaeologists who excavated Masada found a pile of potsherds with names on them—the lots that had been used to decide who would kill the women and children and then themselves. But they did one more thing as they huddled together in the synagogue to pray on that last night. Believing themselves to be the last surviving Jews in Israel, the defenders hid the scroll of the prophet Ezekiel beneath the floor—where archaeologists later found it—leaving it open to the thirty-seventh chapter. God had shown Ezekiel a valley of very dry human bones and asked, “Son of man, can these bones live?” Impossible. But the prophet replied, “O Sovereign Lord, you alone know” (v. 3).

For the surviving remnant on Masada who faced the fury of the Romans, the end of the Jewish nation looked certain. Israel’s cities had been turned to rubble, the people carried away into slavery. Nothing remained except dry bones that
could never live again. But after God showed Ezekiel the valley of dry bones, He said, “O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. . . . I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land” (Ezekiel 37:12, 21). And here I stand on the ruins of Masada over two thousand years later, and against all odds, Israel is a thriving nation with a population of more than seven million people. The land promised to Abraham and his descendants is once again theirs. God always keeps His promises. Even in times of cataclysmic upheaval and change, God’s love and faithfulness are unchanging.

Appearances can be deceiving. When the Romans finally stormed the fortress of Masada and saw that the Jews were all dead, they believed they had stamped out the nation of Israel for good. When King Herod slaughtered the babies of Bethlehem, he believed he had prevented Israel’s true King from taking His rightful throne. But nothing can defeat God’s plans. Nothing. No matter how bleak or uncertain our circumstances may look, our loving Father is in control. “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

Whenever the enemy seems victorious and I gaze at a valley of dry bones, whenever I face the end of a particular ministry or a job or a role that I have filled, I want to remember Masada. We serve a promise-keeping God, a God of miracles. My vigorous attempts to save myself, like Herod’s, will never succeed. But what is impossible for man is always possible with God. When it seems as though all is lost and God asks, “Can these bones live?” let my answer be, “Sovereign Lord, you know.”

Thirst

I have finished exploring Masada, so it’s time for a rest. The Dead Sea hovers in the distance, a serene shade of turquoise blue. The water looks inviting, but for anyone who is thirsty, it may as well be a mirage. The salty, mineral-filled water is poisonous. I have floated in the Dead Sea—it’s impossible to sink—and I found it very relaxing. But when even the tiniest drop of water splashed onto my lips, it tasted bitter. Some of the minerals extracted from the sea are used to make tranquilizers, which may explain why, after a few minutes of floating, everyone is laughing.

I find a bench near the Park Service office on Masada and sit down to admire the view while I wait for the rest of my group. That’s when I notice a small outdoor sink with a water faucet. Where in the world does the water come from now that Herod’s cisterns have dried up? Masada is on top of a mountain in the middle of the wilderness. How can there be a sink with fresh water way up here? I also notice that the faucet leaks—one tiny, sluggish drop every few seconds.

I’m still pondering the out-of-place sink when an interesting thing happens. Three frail brown birds fly over to land on a bare patch of ground a few yards away from me.
Birds?
They look as out of place as the sink. How can birds survive in such a desolate, treeless place? This isn’t my backyard at home with lush foliage and feeders and a birdbath. There aren’t any trees for miles and miles in any direction. Talk about a barren existence!

I sit very still, watching. The birds eye me nervously, as if to see if I’m going to harm them. Then one of them flutters up to perch on the water faucet. The bird pokes its beak into the hole and captures that one precious drop of water, then
flies away. A second bird and then the third do the same. I can’t imagine such a stingy, drop-by-drop subsistence.

Thirst is one of those consistent themes in Scripture that I often overlook—until a trip to Israel and a few hours beneath the desert sun remind me why water is such an important metaphor in the Bible. One of Israel’s first complaints after liberation from slavery in Egypt was thirst. God showed His love and His commitment to a relationship with His people by providing an ample supply of water—from a rock! In the desert! Even after settling down in the Promised Land, the people remained aware of the preciousness of water and their need for God to provide rain. In a land without faucets, the Israelites had to return to their local wells and cisterns every day to replenish their supplies. “Give us this day our daily . . .” water.

Cistern

My grandmother used to say, “You never miss the water till the well runs dry,” but rarely in my suburban existence have I lacked water. I live near a seemingly endless supply of it in Lake Michigan. I can take a leisurely shower and run
the sprinkler to water my parched lawn. Water flows, filtered and chilled, from my refrigerator door whenever I want it. Yet my monthly water bill is half the cost of my cell phone bill and Internet fees—modern life’s necessities. Maybe we should use a new metaphor with the younger generation to get their attention, explaining that a life without God leaves us as helpless and disconnected as a life without Internet or cell phone service.

Thirst is a symptom of need, the body’s way of telling me to take action. If I don’t listen, I end up dehydrated and all sorts of bad things can happen, including loss of consciousness and death. Spiritual dryness is also a symptom: Something is wrong! Take action! I’m drying up! I need God. My soul’s longing for God is as never-ending as my physical need for water. And spiritual dehydration leads to spiritual death. David recognized the parallels when he wrote, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1–2). David isn’t thirsting for a glitzy ritual at the Temple or an inspiring weekend retreat, but for a deep, abiding relationship with his Father.

Why do I often ignore my spiritual thirst, forgetting my soul’s most basic requirement? Instead, when my weekly church services seem dry and my daily devotions don’t satisfy, I blame it on the style of worship music or the new Bible translation I’m using. But the truth is, I can’t sip from an hour-long church service on Sunday morning or dash off a hasty prayer or gulp down a daily Bible verse and expect them to sustain me any more than I can expect a glass of water to last for a week.

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). Living
in a country like the United States, with an ample water supply, we miss the impact of His example. “Hunger and thirst” imply a desperation I’ve rarely experienced—until hiking here in the wilderness, that is. Back home, I fail to see the vastness of my need for righteousness, stretching in all directions like this desert. Nor do I always recognize the futility of trying to quench my thirst from our culture’s reservoirs. Like the Dead Sea, they promise giddy pleasure and tranquility but the truth is, their waters will poison me if I drink from them. “My people have committed two sins,” God told His people in Jeremiah’s day. “They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns . . . that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13).

I don’t need the world’s cisterns. Just as God provided water in the wilderness to quench His people’s thirst, He will quench my spiritual dehydration if I pay attention to my symptoms and recognize my need. Jesus said, “He who believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). Like the birds on Masada who have learned where the faucet is, I can go to the true Source.

Ah, but that would require spending
time
with God—more than an hour or two on Sunday, I suspect—getting to know Him, communing with Him, praising Him. And time, not water, is one of our culture’s most precious commodities. And so I dash around in my busy life, giving God stingy drops of my time, checking Him off my to-do list, failing to pause and drink fully and deeply from my relationship with Him in prayer. No wonder my soul feels parched and dry.

In a land of plentiful water, I think we also forget the preciousness of the well of salvation, the high cost that Jesus paid to cleanse us from sin and clothe us in righteousness.
Would we squander His grace if we did, living unrighteous lives, allowing a shallow “sorry” to replace true repentance? It’s no accident that one of the Old Testament’s requirements for renewed purity for sinners was to wash their clothes and immerse themselves in a ritual bath, spending a resource as precious to them as gold—water. And Jesus ordained that our own symbolic cleansing should be through baptism in water. The good news is that His grace doesn’t drip in tiny drops like this faucet on Masada but overflows to all who acknowledge their thirst.

The birds come and go as I watch them take turns at the stingy waterspout. I have to resist the urge to open the spigot and create a lavish puddle of water where they can splash and drink freely. I don’t do that, of course. But I know a lot of people back home—more precious to God than sparrows—who are dying of thirst and need the water of life. I can lead them to the Source so they will never thirst again.

Stones and Sheep

Today we’re hiking up a narrow, rocky path in the area where Christ’s temptation took place. Like all of the other wilderness places I’ve seen, the acres and acres of featureless desert have no fences or boundaries or landmarks. The terrain seems inhospitable to any form of life. Yet when I stop to take a drink of water and eat a granola bar, I see movement on a nearby hill, as if the rocks have sprung to life and are milling around. Am I hallucinating from the searing sun?

The migrating rocks turn out to be a flock of shaggy sheep with wool the same dirty beige color as the desert. I watch as the shepherd leads them closer and closer to where I’m
sitting, and I’m surprised to see that he is a young boy, ten or twelve years old. How will this child ever find his way home again? Doesn’t his mother worry about him? This is my own fear talking. I find it impossible to stop worrying about my own children so far from home, though they are adults. I am no less worried about them now than when they were riding their tricycles in front of our house.