I’m writing at a different blog for my Israel Trip. I’ve found that Tumblr is just a better mobile blogging platform for when I’m traveling doing Youth Ministry stuff.
I’d love to have you follow along with me here.
Archive - Israel
RSS Feed
Israel Blog #2: Around the Sea of Galilee
It’s funny to think that you can drive around the Sea of Galilee in just about 1/2 a day. I think it looks quite a bit bigger than it actually is but it’s only about 8 miles across.
As we tour all of the sites here I can’t help but thinking about the experience Peter, Lucy, Edmond and Susan have when they come back to Narnia for the first time. It’s not obvious to them at first how much time has passed and they find themselves back at their old castle but they don’t recognize it. It looks much smaller and in a big state of disrepair and nothing at all like it did when they were Kings and Queens. In fact most of the splendor of Cair Paravel came from the inhabitants and not the castle itself. (this thought was originally put forth by Charlie Dunn one of my amazing staff and a pretty sharp guy who just so happens to also be my roommate here. He gets credit)
It’s similar here in Israel. Almost none of the sites that we are touring have much beauty or majesty from the time of Jesus. The few sites that have some sort of beauty are generally either reproductions or completely from a different time zone. The significance of the places we are visiting is not the location or the place themselves it is only Jesus.
With that said it is amazing to stand at sites like the Mt. of Beatitudes and think that you possibly standing in a place where a significant teaching happened. But what I loved doing was just opening up the scriptures and reading the actual words we have recorded of what Jesus said.
If I could say anything negative about our time here in Israel I would say that I get annoyed by Refrigerator magnets. It seems that you can go to any site here and pick up some sort of trinket or cheesy type of memorable junk to take home. I’ll admit that I struggle with the commercialization of places like this. I probably don’t need a “Sea of Galilee” t-shirt or anything else.
Overall great though. Tomorrow we are heading up to the Northern most parts of Israel and I’ll have a lot to say about it. Last year that was one of my favorite days.
