Finding Jesus in Israel

March 12, 2018
Songwriter and novelist Storm (Truck Stop Jesus) takes readers on a journey into the Israel away from tour buses and crowds in this lively travelogue. Storm has visited Israel with his wife a handful of times over the past two decades—always with his grandfather’s Bible in hand. Whether writing about Migdal, the presumed hometown of Mary Magdalene, or Abraham’s Gate in Tel Dan, Storm shows the human side of historic sites by recounting anecdotes about the people who live there and sharing the spiritual lessons gleaned from these encounters. For instance, an unwelcome conversation with a chatty woman on a bus helps him to realize he was fetishizing a place (in this case, the area where Jesus gave his famous Sermon on the Mount) instead of worshipping God. In another musing, Storm drinks coffee with an Israeli bus driver at a café overlooking a site previously bombed by terrorists and considers the universality of suffering: “It wasn’t some disconnected third-page headline from the other side of the world. This was right here, right now.... His problems were my problems now. His pain my pain.” Packed with empathy and scriptural enthusiasm, Storm’s perceptive stories will appeal to Christian readers interested in modern Israel.