That's a Wrap ... on North Africa and the Mid-East

We spent our last full day in Israel visiting some of the remaining Holy Land sights, completing the task of turning the kids into pilgrims. Among the sights today we covered: the Western Wall, Temple Mount, St. Anne’s church (birthplace of St. Mary), the Pools of Bethesda, the Way of the Cross, Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Jewish Quarter, the Upper Room, King David’s Tomb, St. Peter in Gallicantu, Gethsemane, Church of All Nations, St. Mary’s Tomb, the Grotto of Gethsemane, Chapel of the Ascension, Pater Noster Church, and Dominus Flevit. Obviously, we did not spend a tremendous amount of time at each site, but we would talk about why the location is important and what happened at each place.

Over the last few days I was able to visit with my family the locations where Jesus was born, where John baptized Jesus, where Jesus met and asked his disciples to follow him, where He lived and taught while living with Peter in Galilee, where He preached the Sermon on the Mount, where He multiplied the loaves and fish, where He taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer, where He wept for Jerusalem, where He healed a lame man at the Pools at Bethesda, where He shared the Last Supper with his disciples, where He prayed at Gethsemane was betrayed by Judas and arrested, where He was tried by the Sanhedrin at Caiaphas's home, where He spent the night in the pit before being taken to Pontius Pilate the next day, where He was condemned by Pontius Pilate, scourged, and given his cross to bear. We walked the Via Dolorosa, following Jesus's steps through the Old City from the Antonius Fortress to Golgotha. We stood where Jesus was stripped and nailed to the cross. We knelt at the rock where Jesus was crucified and died. We knelt and touched the stone where His body was prepared for burial. We spent time together in the tomb, from which Jesus was resurrected. We stood on the shore at Galilee where Jesus was seen by his disciples after His resurrection and saw the table where Jesus made them breakfast. Finally, we again knelt and touched the stone from which Jesus ascended into Heaven.

While it was a whirlwind tour through Israel, I am happy to have been here again, as a family, to experience this as a family, and to have this become part of our children's faith.  While I do not expect them to remember every fact or figure about what we've seen, I hope that as we sit in church listening to stories from the Bible, or when they read the Bible, they remember that they were there.  I want them to remember what it looked like, what it smelled like, what it felt like to walk in Jesus' footsteps.  

I am grateful beyond words to have had the opportunity to be here with my family to experience this as a family.

Dave