Israel - Day 5

I know in Canada it's snowing with snow squall warnings for parts of Central Ontario, so don't be  jealous when I tell you that today was a scorcher here...this is the temperature gauge on our bus telling us what it's like outside - thankfully our bus is air conditioned!

Leaving our hotel this morning was tough again - we were on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

From there we went to the site of Jesus first miracle, the wedding at Cana where Jesus turned water into wine.  As with many sacred sites, a church has been built over the supposed location of the miracle.  But we stopped there and read the story of the start of Jesus' ministry.

We left there and on our way to our next site, stopped our bus at the side of the road at 11am to have a moment of silence as we marked Remembrance Day.  One of the ladies on our tour, Nancy, whose son has served 4 tours of Afghanistan, led us in prayer and the Canadian national anthem.  What made it even more poignant was that we were in the Armageddon Valley when we pulled over.  Not only did we remember Canadian soldiers, we remembered all the battles going on here in Israel, all the battles fought on this very piece of land we were travelling on, the big battle that may still be fought on this land, and we remembered countries like Syria who do not enjoy the same freedoms we do (we just saw and prayed for Syria two days earlier).

After our moment of silence we continued on to Nazareth, where Jesus was raised.  Surprisingly, there are almost no remains of the village from Jesus' time.  When I heard this I thought the site wouldn't be all that powerful.  I was 100% wrong.  A Christian ministry has set up shop there, and has created a replica village.  They take you through what it was like in Jesus' time, show you the remains they did find, and quote all kinds of scripture to show that Christ really was the promised Messiah.  This was huge for me as it really connected the prophesies in the Old Testament with their fulfillment in Jesus in the New Testament.  One example is the olive press.  Isaiah talks about how Jesus was crushed for our iniquities.  We saw the olive press and how olives are crushed, even the seeds, to make olive oil.  I've heard this before, but seeing it brought new meaning.

The Nazareth visit was also quite insightful.  I didn't know that Roman crosses were built with a seat on them.  The crucified person would struggle for air and would push himself up with his feet.  When he got tired, he could sit and rest for a bit.  Once he started to suffocate again, he'd push up...and then sit back down...and so forth...  It was a horrible way of prolonging the torture.

After three days of this agony, the person's legs would be broken.  Jesus, however, died in 6 hours.  It's thought that there are two reasons why - so that the scriptures would be fulfilled where it says none of his bones would be broken, and because Jesus said that He laid down His life - no one was taking it from Him.  That was really powerful for me, I'd never thought of that last point like that.  What was really neat was that at the end of the tour, we were able to pray with our guide Daniel for him and the entire Christian team that was hosting that ministry...and what a ministry it is.  My description does not do it justice.

Then it was on to the city of Beth-Shan, where King Saul and his sons were hanged after they were killed in battle.  We saw the remains of the Roman city, which was really quite remarkable as mosaic floors, a full theatre, and some rooms were still intact.

For lunch we made an unexpected stop in Jericho.  It was not on our itinerary because it's on Palestinian lands, and often times the border is closed during times of tension.  Today it was not.  Not much is left of the city itself, in fact we really only stayed in the current city.  But we did read the story of the fall of Jericho in the Old Testament, and of Jesus speaking to and dining with Zaccheus in the New Testament.  It's also known as the oldest city in the world.

Finally, from the oldest city on earth we travelled to the lowest place on earth, the Dead Sea.  It's amazing to see how much the water level has been dropping (it's about one metre every year).  We checked into our hotel and we all had one thing on our minds - swim (and by swim I mean float) in the Dead Sea.  I've never seen anything like it.  It literally pushes you up.  You can't stay underwater.  And you can't stay in the water for too long either, there's just too much salt.  In fact, if you reach down while in the water and grab a handful of the ground, it's literally a handful of salt and nothing else.

Before I tell you how our day ended, I'll share something that's been hitting me over the past few days, and especially today.  As I mentioned right off the top, it's hot here.  Really hot.  We've been travelling from city to city, ancient city to ancient city, and the one thing they have in common is that they are all built near fresh water sources, especially the old cities.  They couldn't survive otherwise. And when the spring or water source dried up, the people moved on.  It didn't matter how much money, time, and effort they had put into building the city and the infrastructure, if there was no water they had to leave.  That has brought the meaning behind Jesus being the Living Water to a whole new level of understanding for me.

Okay, so how did we end our day?  By hanging out in our hotel, overlooking the Dead Sea, and watching Israeli fighter jets whizz by just a few hundred feet away.  It was incredible.

Sorry the quality's not great, but you get the idea.  The jets were flying all evening.