D.C. Bound

April 13, 2010….

“John,

I am pleased to inform you that you have been selected for a full scholarship (for the CUFI Summit in Washington DC in July)…”

Wow. That was a first- full scholarship? (apologies to my family for that one…no apologies to Vanderbilt for your ridiculous tuition). But seriously, cool. I guess they liked some part of my application where I probably mentioned that, “I honestly don’t really know anything of much significance concerning the importance of Israel these days…” Impressive way to try to get a scholarship, right?

Regardless, Washington came-a-calling. Travel. Adventure. New people to meet. Free food. Learning. – Count me in for sure! …Politics? Not so much…
So I booked a round-trip flight from Colorado Springs to Dulles International and sat content to have one lagniappe of a summer trip tacked on to my time in the Rockies [I’ve been working with Xan Hood on the development of Buffalo & Company for most of the summer http://www.buffaloandcompany.com/ –shameless plug.]

Summer came, and I returned from a week in Colorado to be at home-sweet-home in Nashville for the month of June. Time at the crib brought some great family moments, a newfound love for downtown Franklin, TN, and plenty of time to read, think, and pray. My mom had been reading a few books by a much-loved pastor in Nashville, Don Finto, who expresses an unyielding love for the Jewish People, so I decided that it would be good to start preparing for the DC Summit with a Christian perspective (albeit an often misunderstood and debated issues within the Church- especially from my background).

As I dove into Finto’s book, God’s Promise and the Future of Israel, I read with an initial tinge of cynicism and caution towards his writing. However, this hardness quickly wore off as I quickly became enthralled with both GPatFoI and Finto’s first text, Your People Shall be My People. (highly recommended). Instead of an air of academic learning and black/white interpretation, I started to read the stories and the Scriptural references in vibrant color- I think a bit of Pastor Finto’s abounding love for the Jewish people quickly rubbed off on me. I began to feel that this issue was much more about further discovering the treasures of God’s love, justice, and grace – His character – than some political debate.

That said, I was still pretty clueless (not that the ‘was’ has worn off in the present tense).

Then in early June, I got a voicemail from an unknown number….

[You have my word that future posts will be much more objective than these foundations of the story. Hopefully I’ll be able to pass along some of the information that I’m learning. Currently entrenched in “Standing with Israel” by David Brog, “Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East” by Michael Oren, and “Start-Up Nation” by Dan Senor and Saul Singer (if you love business and entrepreneurship, you gotta hit this one up)…all that to say, I feel like I’m headed for senior year of high school rather than senior year of college with this summer reading list- eating it up though]