Monday - Genesis Land??

Posted by Scott Jarus

That’s what it said on our itinerary. It sounded like an amusement park to me, the Israel equivalent to Disneyland, or something like that. I suppose I expected to walk through the Garden of Eden – where the animals weren’t afraid of men yet and we could have walked right up and petted Tigers or fed elephants out of our hands. Or maybe we would ride on a Behemoth or Leviathan dinosaur, or get in a raft and ride through the deluge of Noah’s day. But this wasn’t the case at all.

After traveling through twists and turns on the edge of countless bleak, sand covered mountains for miles to see, our buses unloaded in the middle of the wilderness. A man in a tunic led us down a winding path down to a Bedouin tent that was filled with short tables and cushions to sit on. This was lunch! We all sat down and our host came out pretending to be Abraham, welcoming us to his humble abode. He thanked God for this opportunity to show us hospitality and to share what the Lord has blessed him with. He spoke of serving us like kings and queens and told us to eat as much as we could as he would hate to see anyone leave his home still hungry. He said he would know if we were filled, not by the size of our stomachs, but if our eyes had a certain shining gloss. Each of us would need to pass the “eye” test before he would let us leave. If a serving bowl was be emptied, more would be brought out. There was a delightful selection of dishes on the tables – humus, marinated vegetables, chopped cumber/tomato, a cabbage salad, thin tortilla-style wraps and sliced homemade loaves.

After we finished these, they brought out roasted meatballs set in a bowl of rice cooked with saffron – making it a beautiful yellow. Along with this was chicken basted in a delicious date honey. He said it was always proper for a host to offer kings and queens at least two choices and a variety of flavors to please their pallet. After lunch, he explained that it would be normal to serve kings and queens fresh fruits as a sweet finish to a meal, but that is difficult to come by in the wilderness. If he purchased fruit in the city it would most likely be bruised from traveling the bumpy road home – and he would never serve bruised fruit to such wonderful guests as us. So, instead he offered us dried apricots, prunes, and dates – along

with tea and coffee. Everything was tremendous! Then to top it all off, on our way back to the buses some of us enjoyed watching a new born donkey take his first breaths and steps in this world.