2011 - 2nd Journey, Day 5

DAY 15  (May 11, 2011):  Second Journey, Day 5
Psalm 55:6  "On Wings Like a Dove"

Flying over Israel

As I write it is 5:45 in the morning.  I sit on a long padded bench seat with an orange plastic cover next to a sickly green chair.  I’m alone in the bar of the hotel where bottles of liquor sit on shelves across the room maybe 25 feet away.  A few moments ago a sparrow could be heard chirping and then it flew in an open door and landed only five feet away.  It hopped about on the carpet for a minute and then exited the same way it entered.  Apart from the bird only the very low murmuring of a few people in the lobby outside the glass doors of this room can be heard. Oops, nope, two more sparrows just flew in from my right chirping in their unintelligible language at the same time two Israeli hotel workers entered through the glass doors on my left and chattered in their equally unintelligible tongue.  At this time of the day I’d chosen to sit in the bar expecting to find only peace and quiet (and a soft chair) so I could peck on my keyboard in privacy but apparently I may have to share my time with birds pecking on the floor and Jews chattering in Hebrew.

I got here by very slowly and quietly slipping out of bed and into my pants, shirt, and sandals so as not to disturb a sleeping Ferrell in the bed four inches away from mine.  He and I had been up to 11 pm last night handling all of our photograph and video files from a very full day of flying.  No doubt he succeeded in posting a blog where I had failed, so here I am, playing catch-up.  Hopefully, in the next hour or two I can finish the blog I nearly completed last night which dealt with Tuesday’s travels and create one for yesterday’s hours over the promised land in a four place Cessna Skyhawk, both of which I’ll publish before we set out on another adventure.

Wednesday, yesterday, began like all those of the last week.  Wake up in the Grand Court Hotel in Jerusalem, dress and pack for the day, eat breakfast in the dining room with a hundred or more tourists, and take to the highway.  However, I’d been able to sleep in since we had nothing planned for the morning except the hour and a half drive from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.  So, I bagged eight and a half hours of much needed sleep and we didn’t get out of the hotel until after 9 o’clock.  The drive to the coast down through the Valley of Sorek was uneventful except for a brief detour to snap a photo or two of the Valley of Aijalon, now dominated by a recently constructed Bridge.

Arriving at a very tiny municipal airport on the beach just north of Tel Aviv we were subjected to the world famous Israeli security screening.  It’s comforting to know that there is no finer system on earth and that we were quite likely much safer here than you would be at the Safeway store.  Our pilot’s name was Yoab (think Joab) and he’d been flying photographers around Israel for 21 years, so after a brief planning session with the map, we took to the skies.

It had been deemed wise to put Ferrell up front manning his very high quality still camera while I would sit in the back and concentrate on video.  This worked extremely well and the wisdom of it was justified when I jerked a full memory card out of the camera too soon (before it was finished writing to the disc) and apparently lost about an hour’s worth of video.  Que sera sera.

The flight began with views of astonishingly beautiful shallow water colors as the rock formations and sand just beneath the surface of the Mediterranean could be clearly seen through the alternating green and blue hues of the sea.  My oh my.

From that point on our flight was something like an aerial replay of the same line of travel we’d followed when this marathon began two weeks ago.  I expect you’ll be disappointed here though because I took very few photos, only video.  I’ve got an hour and a half of high definition movies (and lost another hour and a half) but I can’t show the videos here and won’t have copies of Ferrell’s photos until later so the only pictures I can show are of Megiddo, the one site I shot on my still camera after the third memory disc failed and we were on our way back to the airport.

Before I show those photos though I’ll simply say that it was truly breathtaking to have this privilege.  Very few people get to fly small private aircraft in Israel.  After I’d spent two weeks last year and two more weeks this trip in buses and cars and on foot it sure brought Israel into focus to watch it unfold before my eyes from the air.  These sights are so beautiful and the day was so clear that at one point Yoab suddenly said into our headphones over the intercom system, “The colors are so STRONG!”  Ferrell and I both appreciated the way he expressed that thought.  Indeed, the colors WERE strong.  So, my apologies for not having any still photos that really bring this out very well for the blog’s sake.  However, if you’ll just quit your job, sell your house, and move out to Kirkland I’ll be presenting some of those pictures in my various sermons and classes through the years to come and you can see them by joining the Kirkland church.  Is that too much to ask?

Very shortly after lift-off we circled Caesarea Maritima a couple of times.  Of course the combination of colorful shoreline and Herod’s magnificent constructions were awesome.  But it was being able to see the long line of the aqueduct stretching off into the distance toward Mt. Carmel which particularly held my attention.  Then we flew northward up the coast to see Mt. Carmel itself, Haifa Bay, all of the Biblically significant locations we’d seen from the bus in Galilee, and many geographical features not visible from the roads (like a magnificent sweep above and alongside the Jordan River for a mile or two before it emptied into the Sea of Galilee).  Dan, Hazor, Mt. Hermon, the Horns of Hattin, the Cliffs of Arbel, the entire Sea of Galilee with several spiraling turns around Capernaum, the cove where Jesus preached from the boat, and the Mount upon which he preached his most famous sermon.  Mt. Tabor, the hill of Moreh, the ridgeline of Nazareth, the Valley of Jezreel.  On and on we flew for a total of exactly three hours in the pristine air above the land God chose for most of the Bible’s setting.  Emotions run high, words fail, the heart soars, the mind reels, and the spirit rejoices.

Megiddo in center,  Mt. Carmel in background,  Jezreel Valley to the right:

Megiddo:

Ferrell Jenkins - Another tough day at the office:

May God bear you on eagle's wings through many days to come...