I have always loved bright colors. Even before I understood why, I was drawn to them. I loved wearing them, painting with them, surrounding myself with them. Somehow I always felt that life was meant to be bright, even when it passed through very dark places.

People sometimes told me, "Tanya, your life is so colorful." I would smile, because some of those colors were born through very painful seasons. Yet I kept noticing something. The darkest moments often became the very places where the light of Christ shone most clearly. Just as in a painting, the deepest shadows make the light stand out even more.

Israel Changed My Perspective

When I became a believer, I learned about Israel through the Scriptures. I read the Bible, went to Bible school, prayed, listened to worship in Hebrew, and even visited Israel once. But later the Lord opened the way for our family to make aliyah, and that produced a major turn within me.

Living in Israel was completely different from reading about Israel.

We visited places where history had happened. We watched old films about the aliyah. We stood in places that had only existed in my imagination before. Suddenly biblical Israel and modern Israel stood side by side.

Until then I mostly saw God's revelation.

Now I was also seeing man's response to it.

It reminded me of learning Hebrew. Before I lived in Israel, I mostly heard Hebrew in prayers, worship, and the Scriptures. Then I came and discovered that ordinary people also spoke Hebrew. Kind people. Rude people. People who loved God. People who didn't. The language itself hadn't changed, but suddenly I could see that people brought very different hearts into the same language.

The same thing happened with Israel.

God's purpose was still there.

But I could also see how easily people bring their own purpose into what God intended to reveal.

Three Dimensions

At that time I was working on a project called Your Promised Land. I kept looking at the same story from three different directions.

The first was biblical Israel.

The second was modern Israel.

The third was the life of every believer.

I wasn't trying to make everything fit together. I was simply looking, comparing, asking questions, and trying to understand what God was showing through all of it.

The more I looked, the more I noticed that the same unfolding kept appearing.

In biblical Israel I could see Moses becoming troubled by the injustice around him. That disturbance became the beginning of a vision. Then came the burning bush. Then the wilderness. Then the Promised Land.

In modern Israel I could see something similar. The horrors of the Holocaust awakened a longing to return home. Then came the vision. Then the aliyah. Then people began building a new life in the land.

And then I would look at my own life and realize that God often works the same way with us. Something deeply troubles us. A longing is born. The Lord begins to reveal His purpose. He leads us through seasons we would never choose ourselves. Step by step He brings us where He wanted us from the beginning.

I wasn't trying to prove a theory. I simply couldn't ignore what I was seeing. The same pattern kept appearing in all three places.

I didn't know it yet, but that was the beginning of another discovery.

The Colors Begin to Speak