time machine

Our time machine slowly descended onto the fertile plains of En Gedi. We found ourselves surrounded by the lush vegetation of this Israeli desert oasis. A thin, high waterfall echoed its song behind us. David once hid here from Saul and his men. We would hide our time machine here. We found a cove just the right size behind the wall of water. The recent modifications to our HoverGear allowed us to float over the river and into the cave. Once we had scampered down the face of the cliff, we began our hike into Jerusalem. We had dressed as inconspicuously as possible, basing our outfits on historical accounts we had collected from various books, magazines and old films about Jesus. It took us most of the day and part of the next to hike into the city. This was not our first trip into ancient Jerusalem (256 AD to be exact). A year previously we had gone to the year prior (that is to say in 2005, we went to 255 AD). We had made minimal contact then. Our sociological studies would continue on this trip with some significant one-on-one conversations with the natives.
We approached the city at about mid-day. The old city is far simpler, and more beautiful, than I had remembered. The open scar where the temple once sat upon its mount in the middle of the small city stood out like a hellish oasis. Still, when I first saw it last year, at sunset, it took my breath away. Our group of three, my teammate Richmond and our translator Gideon, entered the city by the Jaffa Gate. The market was bustling with people. I went up to one stand chock full of olives. The black ones looked like dark eyeballs, their coarse seed pupils looking up at my white skin with curiosity. Our translator struck up a conversation in Aramaic. We spoke with Jacob about the weather, about the current going rate on olives and particular fruits and about living in Jerusalem. While we stood there talking, I felt someone’s eyes boring through the side of my head. It turned out to be a man named Aaron. He was a young fisherman from Rome. Well, actually he was originally from Jerusalem and had returned for a couple months time. He seemed very interested in us, so we struck up a conversation with him and walked into a corner of a nearby alley, the walls of Jerusalem towering above our heads.
As part of our experiment, I pulled out a carefully wrapped package from my knapsack. While Aaron watched, I unraveled my brand new Apple iBook®, iPod® and iBrain® (The iBrain® is a product that will be invited by Apple in the year 2025. It’s a cell phone/palm pilot/mp5 player that expands into a regular sized laptop. It’s solar powered, satellite connected and even offers accessories to make coffee with. It remembers, and does, everything for you. I got it with the help of my time-machine). I was excited to record video of Aaron and the rest of us with the iBrain® video camera and play it back to watch. Aaron had a difficult time understanding that he was watching himself. He didn’t understand what all of the gadgets were for. He didn’t seem to appreciate my excitement.
Then Aaron started to get excited about something. He began talking so fast that our translator had great difficulty keeping up. He switched between Hebrew and Aramaic as he spoke. I began to pick up certain words. I heard Yeshua and Yahweh. Then, it dawned on me, This man is a Christian. He told us the story of his fiancée Claudia, a Roman girl who had become a believer through the testimony of a friend. Recently she was thrown to the lions at the Coliseum. Our research indicated that the persecution had restarted around this time, but Aaron’s story confirmed our speculation. As he continued, I looked down at my iBrain®. Raindrops were beginning to fall on its white plastic cover. I looked up into the clear blue Israeli sky. Not a cloud in sight. Suddenly I felt the warm moisture of tears on my cheeks. Then Aaron told us the story of the first time he had heard about Jesus. A close friend in Rome risked his life to tell Aaron about him. It was only a short time before he put his trust in “the Christ”. And now his fiancée was dead and the world seemed to be closing in on Christianity. But oddly enough, he said, there seemed to be more Christians then ever. Aaron faced almost certain death for so freely talking about his faith with us. But he couldn’t help himself. It oozed out of him like my excitement for future plastic-coated technology. Aaron was a fisherman, but he lived his life as a follower of Jesus.
We dined with Aaron that night. Through him, we met many other believers. They loved each other with a sincerity and a reality I had never seen before. They loved each other with purpose and meaning. They spoke of persecutions and they spoke of heaven. The next day, after spending more time in the city, we readied for an early departure. We had gathered more information than we had dared to hope for before we came. As we hiked back to En Gedi, my mind wondered to Aaron and then to the iBrain® in my backpack. I felt both great guilt and the strange pull of hope. We had been encouraged. We had witnessed something we never expected. But how would we carry Aaron’s heart into our world? Ours is so different. But I also realized that it is very similar. Christianity is still offensive. Eclecticism of religion is the norm. I must find ways to appeal to my fellow man in the ways that Aaron had with his fellow man. As I stepped in our time machine the tears were, again, streaming down my face. I had a vision from the past to take back with me to the present and a toy in my backpack to take back to the future.