Olive Picking

There are a whole bunch of olive trees on the grounds around the center (including on my balcony!)  And now, at the very end of the olive harvest season, it's time to pick them.  So this morning after class a bunch of us went outside with ladders and gloves and bags... climbing up into the trees to get to the top branches that hadn't been picked through was so much fun, even with the resulting scratches and streaks of dirt and sweat on my face and clothes :)  We were picking green olives; if they were black or even blonde you can often harvest them just by shaking the branches. These trees really are remarkable--they're incredibly resistant to drought, fire, and disease, they can live for centuries, and they do well in hot weather (I guess that's why we have an olive tree surviving outside our church building at home!)
So that's what I did this morning :)

In class this morning, one of my teachers asked us to take out our "history books" and turn to 1 Kings...for some reason that just really struck me!   I mean, the scriptures have always been incredible resources for doctrine and stories and reading the words of the prophets, but as I'm learning more here (my Old Testament class goes hand in hand with Ancient Near Eastern Studies) it suddenly is taking on a new role for me as, literally, a historical record.  I'm continually realizing things and making new connections as I learn about the Iron Age and the Assyrian sieges or the lineage of the Pharaohs, and then go read out of the Old Testament again and realize, hey, that's the same guy! :)  Maybe I'm the only one who hasn't caught on to these things, but I'm really enjoying it, even if it does mean hours upon hours of reading :)