Holy Land Holy People Day 6

For the first few days of this trip, we were all thrown headfirst into the Palestinian-Isreali conflict. We have felt a whole array of emotions: sadness, anger, even guilt, as we watched the results of supporting our "ally," Israel, with our words and our tax dollars, as they have removed a largely peaceful and happy people from the land they have lived on for thousands of years, oppressed them, bullied them, and misled the entire world about the true nature of this "conflict." We have seen walls, guard towers, checkpoints, military trucks, all in places they really don't need to be, all justified under the all-inclusive, misleading excuse: Security reasons.

Through all of the heart wrenching stories we have heard from the palestinian people, and the blatant injustice perfectly obvious to anyone with working eyes and ears, thus far it has been somewhat difficult to remember, through the distractions, that we are, in fact, in the Holy Land. I am typing this from the very city where Jesus Christ was born.

Today, we were able to take a step back from the modern day reality of this place and see it through the eyes of the people that lived here over 2000 years ago. We journeyed from Bethlehem to Jericho, the Dead Sea, the Mount of Temptation, and eventually to Nazareth. We finished the day in Ibillin, near the Sea of Galilee.

I checked one major thing off my bucket list today: floating in the Dead Sea. Being in water that is 30 percent salt is every bit as strange as you can imagine. You have no choice but to float, right on the surface. Standing up straight is nearly impossible.

It seems that nearly every physical thing in this area that is related to Jesus's life, his birthplace and the important places he visited, have been made into massive churches, which in turn turn into massive tourist attractions. It is difficult to see the Mountain Satan tempted Jesus on as He saw it when a monastery has been built over the site. The same goes for the Church of Nativity, and Nazareth. I appreciate the significance of these places, but its difficult to see them as they really were with all of the developments.

This is why my favorite parts of this trip have been the bus rides. As we rode from Jericho to Galilee along the Jordan River, I felt that not much had changed. The water, the desert, and the mountains haven't changed much in the last 2000 years. We were seeing that valley just as Jesus saw it.

I have grown up reading and hearing bible stories. Significant and profound as many of them were, they were still just stories. Stories that took place a long time ago in a land far, far away. But seeing these places for myself, in real life, is unreal. The stories become events, things that actually happened, right here, really not all that long ago. Today, these stories became real to me. Jesus Christ was a man that actually lived. He walked, preached, and performed miracles in the very places I walked today. Nothing can describe what that connection feels like.

The Holy Land is drenched in sadness, injustice, and oppression today. The people here are truly hurting. But this is the place where Jesus walked. This is the place where he taught us how to treat each other, to love our enemies. We are all sons of Abraham, children of God. Through all of the darkness, it is abundantly clear that there is hope for these people. Through Christ, there is hope for all of us.

Will White