The City of Peace

Today, we visited many interesting and well-known sites around Jerusalem and Bethlehem. For our first experience this morning, we visited the Temple Mount, on top of Mount Moriah. This was the site of the temple of the God and is now a centerpiece of many world religions. Now it is controlled by Muslims, but was still a neat place to visit and see this morning. We also saw the famous Western Wall, which is an original wall of Herod’s expansion surrounding the Temple Mount and a prominent point of prayer for the Jewish people.

Next we headed to Hezekiah's tunnel where we walked through a long tunnel of a few inches of water that was constructed under Hezekiah that would have led outside the walls of the City of David. It was neat to walk through as a group and amazing to think about the engineering of this tunnel to provide water for the city. Coming out of the tunnel, we stopped at the Pool of Siloam where Jesus healed the blind man. The picture we see from this miracle is that there was simply a man who was once blind, and upon meeting Jesus, he could see. Just like him, we too have a story like this and can share it with the world for the glory of God.

Next, we went to Herodium, the location of one of Herod's palaces and his tomb. At one time, this was a massive, elaborate structure constructed and used by Herod, but today it is no more than archaeological remans. Herod's bones were actually found recently during an excavation of this site. This tells us many things, but upon comparison, we see that Jesus and Herod were pretty much opposite in every way. Herod had magnificent palaces, theaters, pools, and more, but lived for the glory of himself. Jesus was born humbly in a dirty shepherd's cave and lived for the purpose and glory of the Father! Like yesterday, we thought about our lives and what we would live for. Would we seek to build our kingdom and our lives in hopes that our name would be remembered or would we humbly take the shepherd's cave and live to leave a lasting legacy God’s Kingdom.

Following lunch, we headed to Bethlehem to visit the Church of the Nativity. This is a very possible site of the birth of Jesus here in Bethlehem and today is home to a few different churches. After this quick visit, we stopped by a souvenir shop to do some shopping! We then headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner and our night experience in Jerusalem!

Our site this evening was incredible! We got to go on a tour of the excavation and tunnels under the Temple Mount and below the retaining wall. It actually goes much further down into the ground than what is typically seen as the Western Wall. It was fascinating to learn about the construction of the whole thing. Just for them to be able to move the gigantic stones at that time is impressive in itself! Overall, we had an awesome day! We are back at our hotel and ready to get some rest for our final day tomorrow!