Degania Aleph Kibbutz Tractor, Early 1900s. First Kibbutz in Israel
We recently visited new friends in Poriya, near Tiberius, near the southwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. From atop the hill behind the low clouds in the picture below, Mark Twain is said to have stood and looked at the Jordan Valley and labeled the area…
….. A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse…. a desolation…. we never saw a human being on the whole route…. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. (Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad)
View from Poriya near the Southern Shore of the Sea of Galilee
Now this “mournful expanse,” The Galilee, is green and lush. What happened? Isaiah prophesied (and his words are even more amazing when taken in context)…
the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. (Isaiah 35:1)
The improbable has happened 3,000 years after a prophet said it would. But it’s easy to be skeptical.
