Man, what a trip! You should go.
It was amazing and educational and fascinating and lots of fun. I don't know that I could say it was spiritually uplifting, but here are some of my general impressions:
Everything was so much SMALLER than I thought it would be. Even the Sea of Galillee... I never pictured that you could so easily see all the way across. The Old City of Jerusalem, likewise... not so big.
The culture(s) - very different from our own. I was also struck by the stark contrast between the Israeli/Jewish areas and the Palestinian/Arab areas. I do feel I have a better grasp of the complex nature of the dilemma over there now too.
Most of the "holy sites" were not very impressive. Kudos to the Garden Tomb people though for actually sharing the Gospel as part of their tour (talked about sin and the atonement and Christ's work on the cross for us, and everything!) Up until then we hadn't heard any such message from any of the sites we visited. But lots of icons and brass candlesticks and other stuff.
I will try to post some of my 1000 pictures here for you to see, but I won't bore you with them all of course. Sometime in January maybe I will do a powerpoint type presentation for the congregation about my trip - again, an abridged version.
Here's one of my favorite pics, from the window above the altar at the church of Dominus Flevit (the Lord's Weeping for Jerualem). This window looks out over the old city, to the west, from the Mt. of Olives. I just liked the ironwork and the depiction of the Sacrament there in particular.
2 comments:
Welcome Back! Thrilled to see you had such a great time.
I'm interested to have you flush out the "spiritually uplifting" portion on your post. I've spent some time in Israel and didn't come back with what I expected.
Pax, PSK
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