I am inexorably drawn to the modern wonder that is Israel. Drawn to how it has flourished against all odds. I can’t help but be fascinated by how this tiny country, wedged between hostile neighbors all around, prevailed in seven wars in recent history that were waged to completely wipe it out. It’s a country with a violent history. Its people have been defeated, enslaved, scattered to the winds. But since its rebirth as a nation in 1948 in so many ways it’s on top of the modern world today, just like it was during the heydays of King Solomon long, long ago.
I am drawn to Israel because it is so clearly a metaphor of how God takes care of His people. Thru Israel we see how God loves, cares for, disciplines, directs and redirects. Thru Israel we see how God protects and strengthens His own.
In Isaiah 41, God speaks to them (and to all of us today). These were words spoken to the nation of Judah as it entered captivity and slavery in Babylon. Words spoken to people in one of their darkest hours..
“Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you..” (Isaiah 41:10 Nasb).
We have yet to see the final fulfillment of these explicit promises. No one knows when they will all come to pass.
But modern Israel is here because God wants us to know there will be a final fulfillment.
It bogs one’s mind that a country of barely 8 million people could have produced six Nobel Prize-winning scientists since 2002. Even more astounding, that it publishes the most scientific papers per capita of any country in the world.
But maybe we ought not too surprised. Not so much, because He also told them this back then.. “Behold, I have made you a new, sharp threshing sledge with double edges; you will thresh the mountains and pulverize them, and will make the hills like chaff. I will put the cedar in the wilderness, the acacia, the myrtle, the olive tree. I will place the juniper in the desert, with the box tree and the cypress” (vv 15,19.. highlights mine).
Amazingly, Israeli farmers today grow an average of 400 tons of tomatoes per hectare, four times the amount harvested anywhere else. (And also between 3.5 and 4.5 million roses per hectare, again unmatched anywhere else).
Israel today is one of the world’s leaders in water technology. Driven by a perennial shortage of water (Israel is 2/3 desert), Israel has been the world’s foremost innovator in water conservation and agricultural modernization. Israel is also at the technological forefront, the leading edge, in desalination and water recycling. Drip irrigation, used today by practically every developed and developing country in the world, was invented in Israel back in 1959.
Again that shouldn’t surprise us all that much. This too is what God said then.. “The afflicted and needy are seeking water, but there is none.. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and springs in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land fountains of water (vv 17-18.. highlights mine).
Why all these? We are simply and plainly told why.. “That they may see and recognize, consider and gain insight as well, that the hand of the LORD has done this, and the Holy One of Israel has created it (v20.. highlights mine).
Who is “they”? Of course the Israelites of old; but also those today. And if I might add, in postscript, ‘they” includes me today, and all who follow in their footsteps.
Today He says to me.. “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you..”
dklegs 