How does GPS show us at the Beirut Airport?!
- Hannah Tekle
- 12 hours ago
- 3 min read
Tents of Mercy Congregation
Kiryat Yam, Israel
One small hardship Northern Israel has experienced in these years of war is that the IDF often electronically jams the GPS navigation systems we use to drive from place to place.
The first time we noticed, it was surprising indeed. You know how sometimes, instead of calling or texting to ask where your teenager is, or calling again to ask whether your spouse will be home soon – you can look at the “find my people” app and see just where they are? Well, I checked the app to see the location of a family member and it showed they were at the Beirut airport! I was confused, shocked, and worried that somehow their phone had gotten stolen and smuggled into Lebanon!
After nearly three years of this craziness, we now know that if the app glitches – it is the IDF electronic defense systems working to protect us, even at the cost of the inconvenience of debilitated navigation and location apps. It is then that we, the older generation, can smugly try to find our way using old-fashioned map-navigating.
I remember as a child the thick collection of atlases and driving maps my dad had. I remember the silly frustration of not being able to fold a large map back up into its tidy rectangle, and I remember the thrill of looking up the number and letter coordinates of a place and finding it on the matching page. Today, we have become addicted to the ease of navigating by GPS. Its sudden disappearance is inconvenient, frustrating, disconcerting and even dangerous. At the height of the conflict, we had ambulances stopping to ask the way to a street!
Speaking of technological challenges, the radio in our car recently stopped working. Usually, I would catch news on the radio when driving kids here or there. So now, a few days can go by in which I am not exposed to every recent turn of events. When I turn the news on or search on the computer/phone for a news update, I am inundated with information. And if you switch the channel or website, you get exposed to a completely different narrative. That’s when I say: “…but I just want to know the truth about what is actually happening.”
John 14:6 records Yeshua’s words: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” This verse strikes me in a new manner these days. We are so busy looking to technology for the “way” (GPS navigation), the “truth” (AI explanations), and the “life” (social media). They are such a part of our routine, that we rarely stop to think about how dependent we have grown on these all-knowing, all-showing digital tools. When there is no signal because we are in a valley hidden from the antenna towers, or when our battery runs out, or when the systems are blocked for our military safety – then we have the frustrating but beautiful opportunity to disconnect from the exhausting omniscience at our fingertips.
What a reminder to return to the fundamentals of faith in Yeshua. He is The Way, The Truth, and The Life – exactly the anchor we need in this ocean of knowledge, and in this chaos of war.
Prayer Request:
Our annual kids’ summer camp will be held the last week of July. Please pray for all involved for protection, and for God to move in the hearts of all participants.
