A Trip Through the Wadi

Holy Land Picture of the Day

Desert Wadi Today's picture is of a wadi, or dry riverbed, in the Negev Desert of southern Israel. It reminds us of Job 38:25-27; "Who has cleft a channel for the flood, or a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land without people, on a desert  without a man in it, to satisfy the waste and desolate land and to make the seeds of grass to sprout?" Hey Gang:   This morning I am going to share a parable that I learned while in the Arabah of Israel.  To fully appreciate this parable you must understand that the Arabah is part of the Wilderness of Zin and makes the Badlands of North Dakota look like a plush oasis.  I have been privileged to visit and work at Tel Tamar, a kibbutz which was known as Ir Ovot on my earlier trips to the desert and before that it was called Oboth; Moses and the chilren of Israel camped here.  The parable I want to share with you in this epistle is "Beware of trying to pull a vehicle across the desert in order to save a few bucks".  I am not sure how spiritual this parable will be but thought you might be interested in one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. Now for the rest of the story.  As I mentioned we were volunteering at Tel Tamar kibbitz, which is south of the Dead Sea, just down the Scorpion Pass from Beersheva.  And eight miles to the East of Tel Tamar was a Mashov (farming community) where there was a vehicle that had mechanical problems and in need a major attention, and the owner had given to the kibbitz.  The problem was to tow the vehicle the seven miles to Tel Tamar, where they had the facilities and expertise to deal with the problems, would have cost more than a thousand dollars.       So  a pow-wow was convened with Mohammad, a Bedouin who lived in the desert near the Kibbutz, and who was very knowledgeable of the desert- so we thought!.  The discussion centered on whether it was possible to tow the vehicle across the desert, thereby negating the need for a permit in the sum of $1000.  Mohammad, wanting to impress us with his great knowledge of the desert assured us it would be a piece of cake. Soooo, the time came when the action plan was put into affect.  We drove to the Mashov in ten minutes,  connected the dead vehicle to the live one and set out across the desert,  Now I am not going to even try and share the agony and pain I endured in the next nine hours only to say, if I would have set out to establish a project that was absolutely impossible to complete, it would have palled when compared to this experience.  Since I was 'stearer' in the dead vehicle I was also the eater of all the dust that the lead truck sent my way.  We had to stop periodically because I could not see out the windshield or out of my eye balls.  To make this story even more tragic, the mechanic looked at the vehicle the next morning and determined it dead!  It seems they had run it without oil and we all know that is not a good idea. There is a moral to this story. To Mohammad this was a walk in the park, but to we Americans, who would have simply called a  tow truck or hooked up a tow line to the dead vehicle and fifteen minutes later delivered it to it destination,  I learned that day, when it comes to the Desert of Zin  what was doable to a Bedouin is vastly different than to a spoiled American.   I suspect the Children of Israel also learned that lesson in their forty years of wandering.  Blessings,  Gramps