The Bayith of Yayin

The what?!

Let it roll off your tongue - you get used to it after awhile. Begins to sound nice, comfortable.

My sixth grade teacher read a book to us that became the basis of me wanting to know God. It didn't bring me to God, but it created this tiny spark of longing and hope inside me. I never saw that book again, although I looked for it for many years, until recently. Then I grabbed it and read it to my kids who loved it, too.

As I read it as an adult, I loved it even more.

It is called "The Tower of Geburah" by John White. (Worth finding - there is even a series of them.)

In the story, there are many adventures and trials and difficulties, but there is one interesting thing. The Bayith of Yayin.

It is a place where Gaal (the God figure) meets people. It is not a physical location, but it simply appears where and when it is needed. Sometimes Gaal invites people in, pulling them from trials and walking with them through the gates. Other times, people seem to simply be picked up and
dropped there in times of great need.


In the Bayith of Yayin is a pool. Gaal asks you to walk through it. Down you go, on one staircase - you can breathe in this pool - and up the other. In the pool, the filthy, ripped, soiled clothes you came in disappear, and you are dressed in clean, soft, spotless clothes. Wounds and hurts are washed away. At the bottom of the pool, there is a mirror, and often as each person passes, a vision appears - to each person individually. In fact, even if you walk into this pool together, you are alone once you enter it. The vision contains what they need to heal, to endure a struggle ahead, or to give guidance.

After going through the pool, the Bayith of Yayin is simply a place of refreshing. There is always a feast set, music playing, people to be with while you sit with Gaal and rest. The world outside is not even able to be seen or heard, and time is not rushed. It is simply a place of refreshing in the middle of nowhere - Gaal's Bayith of Yayin.

When it is time, again, Gaal would send people out again, back into the conflict and trials. But they would go rested, refreshed, clothed again, and he would give them gifts. The gifts were things that would give them protection and power against the enemy. Books that the reading of the words in it would chase away all evil attacking. Circlets for their minds made of precious stone which would guard their thoughts. For each one, what he needed.

In the middle of all the storm around me recently, there have been times God has picked me up and taken me to His Bayith of Yayin. His place of refreshing in the middle of nowhere.

I'm thankful for those times.

I stole the picture from IVF's website.
It is really a great book, one of my favorite ever written!