Life in America is busy. More than anything else, I used to complain about the busyness of my life. Yet, until I came to Jerusalem, I did little to actually change that busyness. It is an American cultural value. Rarely did it matter what I was busy doing. Often it was just being busy for busyness’ sake. Our awareness of Attention Deficit Disorder and ADHD gave us all permission to be overly busy, multi-distracted, and scattered-brained. We have been bred into a culture and civilization that never ceases.  It counts time in the nano-seconds. It seemed that the busier I was, the more irreplaceable, and hence more important, I became. Or so it seemed.

Time in the Middle East is measured in eons, ages, civilizations, centuries and millennia. This conception of time is fundamentally different from the culture that I grew up in. It is definitely a specific thought process, and to some extent it is fostered by the environment. There are over 5,000 years of recorded history in this land. And by recorded, I mean written. There are thousands of places where we have found human activity that predates this written record. In Jericho archeologists have found a tower that is estimated to be the oldest man-made structure on the planet. THEY FOUND IT SIXTY FEET UNDERGROUND! They date it to 8,000 BCE…5,000 years before the first pyramid was built. In comparison, my college building is about 150 years old, but its foundations are built on the wall that surrounded the city when Jesus was alive. The current walls of Jerusalem are relatively young at less than 500 years old. The people of this land live in the shadow of this ever-present witness of history. It colors every thought and every action.

Here is a section of that 10,000 year old tower.

Both Israelis and Palestinians connect their current existence to this ancient history. Their justification for their continued presence in the land today is based upon their connection to this past historical legacy. Both groups trace their heritage to a common ancestor in Abraham. He walked throughout this land some 4,000 years ago, give or take a couple of centuries. Current day residents in the land see themselves as being a link in this chain of history. They are not at the end of the timeline. Rather, they are in the middle of it…and time stretches out to the far distant generations in both the past and the future. As they see their past and their identity as rooted in this land, so also do they see the future. This theme is woven throughout the Scriptures, and is still very much active today. Without diving into politics, military strategies, oppression, or peace plans, this idea can be seen as a main reason for the ongoing conflict, but that is for a later posting.

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This understanding of time has led me to alter some of my thought processes. My first reaction to the physical surroundings of history is to see my life as getting smaller and smaller. What is my 80 years when put next to a water channel constructed under a mountain of solid rock in the 7th Century BCE? My life really is but a vapor… here today and forgotten by tomorrow. It’s kind of a depressing thought–I’m not quite as important as I would like to think that I am. Yet, it is a right thought. It gives me a more proper understanding of my place in history. As such, it also makes my life feel much larger at the same time. It’s a bit of a paradox, isn’t it? Well…yes, but it works. Here’s how.

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For whatever reason, a Holy Grail of my culture is youth. Apparently the most important things in life happen when you are in your twenties. Maybe you can do cool things while still in your thirties, but by the time you are forty, you’re almost dead. You become a grandparent in your fifties, and you are mostly seen as irrelevant and worthless by your sixties. This may not be what the average person on the street thinks, but it is what is taught by most TV shows, celebrity appearances, and educational classrooms. At the heart of the standard American dream is the goal of doing nothing in old age. Oooh…am I being cynical? Am I stepping on toes? Probably, but that’s not the main point I am trying to drive home. In direct contrast, a cultural value of the Middle East is old age.

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Yet, this value is deeper than old age and the wisdom and hard work it represents. The underlying concept is a value for the whole life, the entirety of life. Just as children are the key to the future, so are the grandparents the connection to the past. They are woven together and intricately connected.  Each tells a part of the story, but neither group ever tells the end. It goes back to being in the middle of that timeline again. These thoughts have caused me to change how I look at my own life. If my youth is the most important part of my life, then I will become like Napoleon’s Uncle Rico.

However, I am beginning to see that my greatest contributions may come thirty years from now. That’s more than half my lifetime away. What I am doing next year is important, for sure. But it becomes just one small step when I’m planning on what I want to be doing when I’m 55 or 75. Here’s an example…

If I wanted to understand theology better, it would be important for me to go learn German. What better way of doing it than by moving to Germany and immersing myself in normal life for two years? If that was just for my own benefit, and didn’t have a career objective attached to it, then the current American culture would see it as a waste of two years of my youth. Am I wrong? Yet, what are a couple of years in comparison to a long lifetime?

And this is one way that the Middle Eastern concept of time and history has begun to reshape my thoughts.