A Soothing Lullaby By Starlight On Mount Sinai

5/17/98: Swam in the Red Sea this afternoon. Drove to Mount Sinai, planning to reach summit in time for sunrise. Unfortunately, after we were well into the hike, we realized that we forgot Ruth’s pain medication back at the car…

5/17/23: We drove over some rugged dirt roads in our little sub-compact rental car to get to Yolanda Reef in the Ras Mohamed National Reserve, the southern-most point on the Sinai Peninsula, and one of the foremost scuba diving locations in the world. We didn’t have scuba licenses or gear, so we simply did some snorkeling over the reef. The water was crystal clear, warm, and a rich palette of deep colors. We arrived without another soul in sight and after smothering ourselves in sunscreen, we snorkeled out over Yolanda Reef and Shark Reef. The fish were huge and spectacular. We saw no sharks, but did see at least 20 different species of fish, all as beautiful as the next. Ruth swam over two manta rays that had been invisibly nestled in the sand and then glided away gracefully along the ocean floor.

We enjoyed it so much that we stayed longer than we had intended. Behind schedule, we hastily showered at the hotel and headed to Jebel Musa, or Mount Sinai. Our plan was to hike up to the top and sleep under the stars, so we could watch the sunrise from the summit the next morning. The drive through the valleys was spectacular in the afternoon sunlight, but we arrived late as the sun was already going down, and only then realized we had forgotten both our headlamps and Ruth’s pain medicine!

We had hoped to visit Saint Catherine’s Monastery at the start of the hike, but arrived too late for that. This monastery claims to house living remnants of THE burning bush from which God spoke to Moses. Unlikely, but possible, I suppose. But it does not add to or subtract from the account of Exodus 3 in any case. Studying the Pentateuch in Hebrew one will find that it is written as, and reads like, a history, not a myth. While various parts of the account describe the miraculous, it nevertheless presents the events as factual and real. We can ask whether the stories are true or false, but it is an injustice and subterfuge to dismiss the stories as mere myth. The only honest option is to believe or not. I have found good reasons, including the Biblical text, to believe that God does miracles.

We started our ascent, but by the time it was too dark to go on safely we were little more than half way up the mountain. So we stopped at a stone hut that some Bedouin entrepreneur used as his spot to sell refreshments to pilgrims like us. Ruth’s back pain was spiking, therefore we gained his permission to lie down and sleep for a few hours on a flat space just near the side of his hut. He even provided us a blanket. He was quite friendly and played some music on his Egyptian oud and a homemade lyre made from a rusty, old 5-liter olive oil can for a resonator body! A wonderfully soothing lullaby by starlight under the soaring granite cliffs. We ended the day with our usual bed time prayers, but this time asked God to sustain Ruth through the pain so we could rise in a few hours and make it to the summit in time to see the sunrise.