Tuesday - March 1 - Last Day in Israel

on March 01, 2011 by Walt Dilg

Tuesday – March 1 – Last Day in Israel

                Today was a whirlwind of emotions.  It started off even keeled enough with a visit to Ein Kerem, a lovely little village outside of northwest Jerusalem.  Here we visited the Church of the Visitation, the place where Mary met up with Elizabeth and offered her song of praise to God, the Magnificat, and the Church of St. John, the place honoring the birth of John the Baptist.  Both places are marvelous structures that please the eye and spiritual sensibilities.  Both also have interesting ceramic pieces, very large, that have written upon them the sacred passage relating to their namesake.  The Magnificat is written in 40 some languages of the world, as is the prophet passage relating to John birth and what he will do for the world.  The women in particular found it fascinating that the Church of the Visitation had incredibly beautiful painted columns on the wall that were headed by leading women of the Bible.

We then headed over to Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the over 6 million Jewish holocaust victims.  We knew this would be a necessary visit yet a hard one.  It lived up to our expectations and more – very haunting  - very moving – very convicting of our human sin – very motivating to do all we can to not have this type of thing happen again.   So sad – so very sad.  May God help us be better people to one another.

The Garden Tomb was next.  It was discovered in the late 1800 by a Brit who convinced the Anglican Church that this was Jesus tomb and place of resurrection.  They ran with the ball and have created a landscaped environment of tomb and gardens that just perfectly fit into our childhood image of what this must have looked like, so it is very evocative of this time for our Lord.   We gave ourselves over to the experience with a moving time of communion and found ourselves touched anew by the loving presence of our living Lord.  A great finale to this segment of our trip. 

Tonight four of us will head home and the 22 remaining will continue on to Jordan.  More adventure awaits.  Keep us in your prayers as we cross the Allenby bridge into …