Chilly and crisply clean northern winds rush down the snowy crown of Mt. Hermon colliding with sandy warm winds stirred up from the Arabian Desert which spill over the Golan Heights ridge. The opposing winds meet this morning, before me, over the Sea of Galilee in a low-hanging mist which moves southward down the Jordan Valley toward its demise under the Middle Eastern sun.

The Sea of Galilee wears a misty veil like a bride waiting to be revealed

The misty veil has lifted and the beauty of spring flowers
will soon fade

It is the sacred season; a time of beginnings, a time of endings. This year the Passover calendar intersected with the remembrance time of the Passover Lamb whose sacrifice altered time. Families gathered around their Seder tables with stories of freedom as others recalled Yeshua’s final meal with His disciples in an upper room in Jerusalem where He spoke of a different type of freedom. The surprising events which followed were the fulcrum of story…God’s story.

Psalm 47:4 says of God, “He chooses our inheritance for us.” The word for inheritance, “nachalah (nakh-al-aw),” caught my attention in the original Hebrew. Words coming from a common root are related and I found that the same word for inheritance, heritage, offspring, or possession is used in the Bible to describe a stream bursting forth seasonally like a torrent or the wadi valley which fills with a winter flood. It also refers to a mine shaft. Those shafts allow the treasure to be exposed to the light. My thoughts gushed up like a seasonal spring seeking a place to settle.

I remember my archaeology professor, esteemed yet crusty Gabi Barkay, standing in Area G of The City of David as we peered into what is now referred to as “Warren’s Shaft.” His voice boomed throughout the cavernous niches. “These are karstic,” he said in his inimitable way, boisterously and unequivocally explaining how ancient seasonal rains filled porous limestone cavities until shafts burst forth with “karst springs” from the Gihon water system. Here it is thought, around 1000-900 B.C., David’s troops took possession of Jerusalem from the Jebusites. The inheritance was secured and the Gihon Spring and Pool of Siloam became critical for Temple sacrifices during the pilgrimage feasts like Passover, Shavuot (Pentacost), and Succot (Feast of Tabernacles).

Our life is somewhat like a karst spring, bursting onto the stage of history and then finding a settling place. What will be the inheritance which we pass on to those who come after us? What is our “possession” which will be received by future generations? What will be our story?

The year was 1973. My late husband, Gary Bayer, was a young actor in New York City looking for his “defining role.” He was tapped to play “Richmond” opposite Al Pacino in the Broadway production of Shakespeare’s Richard III. It was not Gary’s “defining role,” but he enjoyed telling people that just before curtain close every night of the play’s run, he “killed” Al Pacino with a spear. Pacino went on to find one of his most “defining roles” as Michael Corleone in The Godfather.

Remember Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur, Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, or Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life? These roles gave their life definition.

Gary’s life-focus moved from Hollywood film and television to Israel in 2000 when he was invited to direct dramatic musicals. He knew he was “a million miles away from Hollywood auditions,” but he sensed that this was the place of his calling. Following that, whenever an inspirational hit premiered he grieved a bit as he thought of making a difference in people’s lives by portraying someone who encouraged, stood with integrity against odds, and called out the best in others. He was grieving his perceived absence of a “defining role” as an actor.

One week before Gary entered the hospital in Jerusalem and three weeks before his funeral, he sat here in a leather recliner which had become his bed in order to make it through days and nights of pain as cancer consumed. I mentioned to him about a film being released with an inspirational message. With very labored breathing he whispered, “I would have loved to play a role in that. The Lord knows it is my heart’s desire and He says He will give us the desires of our heart (Psalm 37:3-6), but I feel my life force flowing out of me now and I have missed my opportunity.” His words pierced me like “Richmond’s” spear.

I paused a moment…then these words came to my lips and I spoke them over Gary as I sat on the arm of his chair. “Gary, you have been living out your ‘defining role’ on the floors of the hospital chemotherapy ward, in front of Muslim shopkeeper friends in our Old City neighborhood where you stopped to pray for them or their family members despite your own great pain. You lived it out among the countless people you touched with your lavish kindness.” “But I didn’t think it would be this way,” he exhaled.

The stone mason has made a single piece of Jerusalem limestone into a simple box which awaits a limestone cover engraved with Gary’s epitaph

More than a year has passed since the misty veil lifted and Gary was absorbed into the heavens. His earth suit is buried on Mt. Zion where I am completing the ideas I believe God put in my mind to mark the site for those of us left behind and future generations. The ideas didn’t come all at the same time, but have come together to make me smile as artisans are working to create a grave marker which tells a story.

An olive press stone from our Galilee garden, a bronze film reel cast by a sculptor friend, and words of hope combine to tell a story

At this Passover season and as Israel prepares to celebrate her 70th Anniversary as a modern nation in her ancestral homeland, let us rest in the freedom that God “chooses our inheritance for us.”

Enjoying the walk home,

Cindy