Megiddo and the Carmel

The Tiyul that we took today at Megiddo was definitely one of the more beautiful tiyuls that we have had so far. Personally one story that we heard today was the story of Eliyahu the prophet and Ahav. To give some background on the story Ahav is the king of the Israelites and for political advantages he marries a women from a surrounding civilization. This women bring the ideas of Idolatry to the Israelites. Obviously Eliyahu is upset about this so he tells Ahav that because of what he did there will be no rain for three years. Long story short they were in such disagreement about which ideology was correct so they had a battle where Ahav tried to show off the power of his gods by doing weird sacrifices and prayers. When that did not work for Ahav, Eliyahu showed off the power of hashem by bringing 12 stones together representing the unity of the 12 tribes. When hashem sent the fire everyone was obviously shocked and felt as if they knew the answer of the true God. This whole story is extremely shocking to me considering the fact that I don’t see God as a person does the will of humans. It seems a bit uncharacteristic of Hashem to do this. Although it shows that God interferes when it is most necessary. I feel as if the lesson this story is trying to teach us is the essence that forcing someone to believe something never works. You can only teach about the belief and have that person individually decide based on the morals and values of whatever the belief is. Overall this was a great Tiyul that taught me how to understand the other side of the story. - Oliver