Tuesday June 14th

Today is our first full day in Jerusalem, and it will be impossible to encapsulate it all.

Jerusalem

I will try to cover some of the highlights.  Overall we have been extremely blessed that the crowds are very light.  We are getting everywhere so easily so our wonderful guide keeps adding more and more items to our itinerary.

First thing this morning we returned to the Wailing wall.  It is customary to write a prayer on a piece of paper an stick it into a crack in the wall.

Wailing Wall

My prayer was something that Ron shared earlier, that I have been thinking about frequently on this trip.  The prayer is the same as Peter's answer when Jesus asked who do you think I am. It is something I know I do not acknowledge as much as I should.  “You are the Christ, the son of the living God”.

From there we went to the Dome of the Rock.  Inside the structure there is a rock that is said to be the alter upon which  Abraham placed his son Isaac.  Later Solomon built the temple on this sight.  The Holy of Holies, the place of offerings, was built over this rock.

Dome of the Rock

This is the most holy sight for the Jews and now there is a mosque built upon this spot.  Up until recently this sight was inaccessible by visitors.  For the Muslims this is a very holy spot also, because they say Mohammed ascend here.  There is a lot of tension because of this.  More then ever I have realized how unimportant this physical spot is to us as Christians, because the true temple is in our hearts where the Holy Spirit resides.

In my small group we have been studying the book of John.  We are familiar with a lot of the occurrences in that book.  We went to the pool of Bethesda where Jesus healed a crippled man on the sabbath.  We studied this recently and now I visited the spot.

Pool of Bethesda

Adjacent to this sight is the Church of St. Ann.  We went in and sang some hymns.  This place had the most perfect acoustics imaginable.  It made a bunch of novices, like us, sound like a heavenly choir.  I'm sure regardless of how we think we sound, this is what God hears coming from our heart.

In the evening we had the privilege to go to the tunnels under the western wall.  This allowed us to understand how the temple Solomon built originally looked.  We were able to follow the western wall, a continuation of the wailing wall, underground for practically the entire length of the temple.  We were at the very base of the wall where it blends into the bedrock of Mount Moriah.

In addition to the above we also visited: King David tomb, the upper room (sight of the last supper), the Via Delarosa, the prison of Christ, Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Mount of Olives, garden of Gesthemeny, Church of Agony, several of the gates into the old city, Absalom's tomb, Zachariah's tomb, and several other items.  This day was definitely and overload on information.

We finished the evening listening to a group young people who are here in Jerusalem reaching the Jews and the Muslims with the good news of Christ.