"As you laid down your life for me, I now lay mine down at your feet. God, I pray your will be done. I give myself as an offering. As David hid within En Gedi's caves, so I find my refuge in your arms. As an oasis for the Israelites, you refresh my soul. Immerse me in Bethesda's pool, for I long to be healed by your embrace. Take me to where Jesus lived. Oh God, I desire to gaze upon your face. Where is the mount named as a skull? Where all my sins were paid in full. Lead me to the garden tomb where Jesus set me free. For there is but one God, and only one life. One man who paid it all, the perfect sacrifice."

I wrote this shortly after visiting many Biblical sites in Israel on a mission trip in 2014. I had always grown up hearing the stories of the Bible. I knew of Moses parting the Red Sea. I was familiar with David fleeing Saul by running into the caves surrounding the Dead Sea. I was told about Jesus weeping with the weight of the world upon his shoulders in the Garden of Gethsemane. I knew that Jesus' life giving sacrifice was made on a hill that was named "Golgotha" because of its skull like appearance. These places and people were always simply stories to me. They were figures in the back of my mind, faded like distant memories. I never thought even for a moment that these bedtime tales would become real to me. Even though I grew up in a home that held scriptural literature in high esteem and truth, it was never reality to me.

In the summer of 2014, I was presented with the opportunity to travel to Israel. While there, I got to visit many of the scenes that I had heard about as a child. Places that were once distant and foreign to me suddenly felt like home. The physical smells, sounds, and sites brought scripture to life for me. You've heard the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words." However, nothing compares to a physical experience. Have you ever felt an emotion that words failed to describe? Or a sense that you could not clearly express to others? Feelings and memories such as these are irreplaceable, indescribable, and unforgettable.

All at once literature became living, and poetry became reality. Poetry is a tool that I use in order to attempt to translate my experiences, and it is intended to cause feelings to stir within others as well as ourselves. They are both personal, and can only be fully understood by the participant. Working together, they bring us back to reality, but we don't lose our creative spark and fascination. Poetry and experiences are individualistic. They have no room for generalizations, stereotypes, and careless forgetfulness. Experiences bring poetry and literature to life, like Israel made scripture come alive. The two work beautifully hand in hand in order to remind us of all the aspects of human feeling and reality.