Layers

One of the images that became symbolic to me in Israel was the tell. A tell is a man-made hill containing layers of past civilizations that were built on top of a previous generation. A city would succumb to war, earthquake, or other elements, and another group of people later would come build a new city on top of the rubble. So Megiddo alone has over 26 layers of civilizations spanning thousands of years. Crazy. What stuck out to me was how each new civilization often would build on foundational stones from the generation before. 

So it is with us. Generations come and go, but foundations tend to remain. If you dig in any work of God, you soon find foundational stones of what He has declared & carried generation to generation. Everything God does is layered. And everything God does has a foundation. The more you dig, the more you discover, & the more it becomes apparent. 

People are like tells too. There are always layers underneath...one season feeding into the next, making up the picture of where we’ve been and who we’ve become. Sometimes it takes some digging to discover what has been carried through decades. Sometimes we got to stop and pick up a piece of pottery hidden in the rubble and seek to understand how it got there. It’s also why it’s important in every generation to take down the “high places” so another generation won’t start building on things that won’t last. 

So now when I look at ministry and people, I know I’m looking at a tell. And whether or not I get to uncover every level, I can know something of what I see is rooted in what’s below the surface. It all tells a story that continues generation to generation.