Israel-Final Thoughts

At the beginning, I tried to soak in as much as I could on this one time trip, but halfway through I knew I had to come back. It was an amazing place to visit on so many levels. Just to give you an idea, I would move there in a heartbeat. The only other place I visited where I felt that way was New Zealand. Thank God the New Jerusalem will be there. I am so excited about that now, but I do hope to get back before then! I never felt unsafe. Maybe it was God, maybe it was because it felt so much like the US-familiar. It's a melting pot like the US. I couldn't tell who lived there b/c they speak American English. I only ran into one person who didn't speak English. Most of the immigrants are from America.

We are asked to pray for the peace of Israel. Which seems silly if you've read revelation. But peace means something different than what we think. Peace means fullness, completion, restoration.

It's an extremely kid friendly place. I saw parks everywhere and of course chicken nuggets and french fries. Kids and kid noises are very tolerated.

There's always something I experience in a different culture that I wish we had here in America. That one thing was how the older kids watch out for and take care of the younger kids. It was so neat to see them holding their hands and leading them around. We separate so much here. Lake has his own 3 year old class at church and gets little exposure to bigger kids. Yes, safety is an issue, but older kids can learn to be mindful of little kids as I saw in Israel.

I'd say the one disappointment in the trip was how little time we had to sit and soak it in. I mentioned how we whizzed through Israel. I would really have enjoyed a day to wander in the hills by the Sea of Galilee (they just call to you to walk and walk on them), or sit on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, or take a boat out and float around for awhile. Shoot, I would have been happy to wander in the desert. We did have some time once we got back to the hotel but that wasn't the same as being at Peter's Primacy.

The last day was my toughest day. We didn't go at our normal pace and I was REALLY missing my family. Up until then, I did great. We were able to communicate through the week a lot more than I anticipated and that helped.

So, should you visit? YES! And take me with you. :) It was nothing like I imagined and I couldn't even begin to explain it to you (though I tried). The pictures I took won't help either. You will be amazed at how God's word comes alive with new and deeper meaning because you get more of the context. I loved seeing where places were in relation to each other. It makes reading/studying the Bible so much more fun. One word of warning, if you visit Israel and are not a believer, please don't visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and think that's what it's about. Instead, know that believers REJOICE that he is risen.

God bless you and thanks for reading about my adventure!

Israel-more random pictures

About the 9th day, I was getting the hang of taking notes while walking. Our guide was always on a mission and I never knew if I should take pictures or take notes. I was always missing something. We weren't given any time for reflection out on the sites.

Young soldiers. Aren't they so beautiful? People asked if seeing people with rifles was scary. These were the people you saw most with rifles and the other ones were assigned to watch over school children. It wasn't scary at all.

My late night group. If you were wondering what I did after dinner, this is it. All the married couples would do their married thing and us w/o our spouses/girlfriend went out for some cultural enhancement. :)

Our amazing guide. Thank God she answered His calling. She was the best way to experience Israel in such a short time...if you could keep up!

My wonderful roommate, Roberta. We took good care of each other. She reminded me a lot of my mom.

Israel-Random pictures from friends

Boat ride on the Sea of Galilee

Our pastor's granddaughter, Hannalee. The only one to go in the Sea of Galilee.

Thorns for a crown perhaps?

The whole gang in Capernaum.

Admiring the sunset on the boat on the Sea of Galilee.

Israel-Day9-Garden Tomb

About 200 years ago, there was doubt that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the place Jesus was crucified and buried. Golgotha means place of the skull. The picture in the picture shows what this hillside used to look like-kind of like a skull. Currently it is a bus station. Romans liked crucifixions to take place where many could see (a busy place) and accessible so it most likely would have been at the bottom of the hill. This site was used as a place of execution (stoning) from an earlier time.

The entrance to the tomb which is a short walk from the first picture. You can kind of see the channel in front of the wall where the stone (shaped like a thick disc) would have been. The channel is for ease of rolling the stone back and forth. The area surrounding the tomb is a beautiful garden. I had fun taking pictures of flowers, cactus, pomegranate trees, etc while I waited to go in.

Where Jesus would have lain in the tomb. He is not here for he has RISEN.

An interesting tree outside of the tomb. BTW-(Completely unrelated to this tree) I learned earlier that for crucifixions, the accused would only carry the crossbeam. They would crucify them on an actual tree that they nailed the crossbeam to.

We took communion in a little chapel outside the tomb area. I couldn't help but hope this was the place rather than the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I guess I just want it to be a beautiful garden-like place rather that an overdone shrine.

Israel-Day9-Garden of Gethsemane

Entering the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed before he was arrested. Gethsemane means oil pressing.

There is an olive grove in the garden. The olive tree is the sign or symbol of Israel. The menorah is lit from olive oil. You can cut down an olive tree but it will grow back. The shoots that grow from the bottom of the tree are called nozrim. Another meaning of nozrim is christian (gentile believers) and another meaning is watchmen. How you graft a nozrim into the tree: cut one off, make the cut in a cross shape on the tree and stick the nozrim in. It is very easy to graft. The tree tends to rot from the middle so it needs the shoots to hold up the tree. The tree is very easy to transplant. It can be abused, cut, etc. and it will still survive. Jesus of Nazarene is translated Salvation of Christians.

Inside of the Church of All Nations they have the exposed bedrock where Jesus is believed to have prayed. You'd think I'd have taken a picture of that!.

Outside of the Church of All Nations.

Israel-Day9-Mount of Olives

I paid a dollar to get a picture with Peter the donkey and his cute owner.
FYI-the Near East begins on the Mount of Olives.

The Dominus Flevit Chapel. We sang some worship songs in here and some Asian tourists joined us. It has an excellent view of the Temple Mount. This is the only chapel that does not face east.

The inside ceiling. The Messiah is believed to return here (as in the Mount of Olives).

View of the Temple Mount from outside the chapel.

The chapel is shaped like an upside down tear drop b/c this is where Jesus wept as he looked at Jerusalem.

Israel-Day8-The Shuk (open air market)

We had a few moments to walk through the Shuk on the first day of Hanukkah. I ate some amazing crescent roles. We couldn't take any pictures of the Hanukkah celebration by the messianic congregation but it was really cool :)

Israel-Day8-Yad Vashem (Holocaust museum)

Pictures are not allowed in the museum. The museum is a series of rooms that snake back and forth always coming back to the center where you can see how far you have to the end. The center hall is shaped like a triangle (the ceiling being the point). They did an excellent job of making you feel solemn, oppressed, overwhelmed. We only had an hour and a half, but you could easily spend 2 days in there (if you could handle it that long) reading all their material and watching the videos.

This is Schindler's tree planted in the Avenue of the Righteous. More than 122,000 trees were planted in honor of the non-Jewish people who assisted the Jews.

Children's memorial. Below is a room that feels like you are walking inside a diamond in the dark with little candles lit behind the facets. There is a voice that lists the names of the children who died along with their age and the country they were from.

Israel-Day8-City of David (ancient city)

I was limited to my phone for pictures so I don't have very good pictures for the City of David. David conquered the city in 1000 BC from the Jebusites.

We walked through the water tunnels, the dry ones anyway. This is how we think David got into the fortress. This is a picture of the water from the Gihon. The tunnels were dug in the Bronze age before they had iron tools. They jammed wet wood into the crevices, let it dry, set it on fire and it broke the rock.

The smallest coin-the widow's mite. They found many in their excavations of the area. Some people in our group bought some.

Shiloach pool.
John 7:37: The last day of the feast was the driest time of the year. People were dying because the cistern water was bad. Everyone is hopeful for rain and Jesus asked if anyone is thirsty. He has LIVING water.

This is the exit tunnel which flows into the Shiloach pool. It is believed that Joab entered the city here to open it up to David and his army.

Israel-Day7-Western Wall & Southern Wall

Our lunch friend. I wanted to bring this one home.

The Western (Wailing) Wall on the women's side. It's pretty packed. Women pray, stick their prayers on pieces of paper in the rock, and recite or read the Tanakh. When they are done, they back away from the wall until almost out of the area. It was beautiful to see their love for God's word, very convicting/inspiring. It felt holy for sure.

We visited a national park on the southern side of the Temple Mount. The Mt of Olives can be seen behind me.

More views of the southern side of the Temple Mount.

Israel-Day7-Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Believed to be the site of Golgotha and where Jesus was buried. There is actually one other site that some believe (more recently) could have been the place...coming up on Day9.

The inside was almost more than I could handle. It was quite oppressive.

More. Sadly considered to be the holiest place for Christians and I felt anything but.

This is the sepulchre. My battery died on my camera so this and the next photo was taken with my phone. God's holy fire is believed to come down into the sepulchre every Easter and people line up to light their candles from it.

This is believed to be the anointing stone where Jesus body was prepared for burial. People kneel to weep and rub the stone.
Early Christians abandoned the Temple Mount believing in Replacement Theology-that God was done with the Jewish people. Their focus was on this place instead. The Muslims have the Temple because the early Christians had the wrong theology.

Irael-Day7-Bethesda, St. Annes, Via Dolorosa

John 5: Jesus heals the paralytic at the pools of Bethesda.

St Anne's has the best acoustics in Israel. We sang a couple songs and it was simply amazing. It made even me sound decent :)

We walked along the Via Dolorosa which is the commemorative walk to enter the way of sorrows. It is not the actual walk that Jesus took to the cross. There are 14 stations along the way, each symbolizing a part of his journey. Not all of them are biblical. This picture is station 5 for Simon of Cyrene who carries Jesus' cross.

This is the quiet section of the walk. I wish I had taken a picture of the busy part but I was too busy taking it in and trying to keep up. We flew through this.

The walk ended here on top of the roof of (part of) the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.