I just recently finished up a study on the Book of Daniel in the Bible. I absolutely loved the familiarity of the ‘stories’ (The Fiery Furnace, The Lions Den) of the first 6 chapters and their challenge to live with integrity in this world no matter what comes. But I probably loved the last 6 chapters even more because of the history and prophecy that is just so stinkin cool in light of how awesome God is!

One random thing that stuck out to me was how God called the region of Israel “The Beautiful Land” (NIV) or “The Glorious Land” (ESV, KJV). When I think of Israel today, I picture the war zone, the dusty color of the buildings and definitely something I would not describe as beautiful. But after reading that in Daniel 8 & 11, I was struck by how the media has affected my view of God’s holy land, flowing with milk and honey, the beautiful land, by the images I have seen on TV. So today, I remembered to do a little web search on images of Israel and what I found WAS beautiful! You can check them out for yourself at www.israelimages.com.

I’ve been to Hawaii now and had heard for years how beautiful it is and how I just HAD to go. I would say the same thing to someone else having been there but now I really want to go to Israel! How cool would it be to not only walk the same places Jesus did and see all of the historical places, but to take in this “Beautiful Land” that God chose, out of every place on earth, to send His one and only Son to live as a man. To experience the human life on earth. I imagine it has to be pretty darn cool and I would love to be able to personally say, Hawaii is awesome but you HAVE to go to Israel!