Day 04 - Galilee: Chorazin, Mount of Beatitudes, Tabgha, Capernaum, Galilee Boat Ride

Today we began our tour of the Galilee region. We learned that the sea of Galilee isn’t really a place, it’s a region.  We began at Tabgha, which is known for the fishing. It is the place where Jesus called the brothers, Peter and Andrew, and James and John. It is also somewhere that Jesus would later forgive and restore Peter after he deigned Jesus three times when Jesus was arrested. This was an amazing place. Speaking for myself, I was overwhelmed, and I don’t think I was the only one. What a way to begin our day on Sunday morning, in the place where Jesus restored Peter. 

After Tabgha, we traveled a little way to where Jesus would kind of make his hometown for the three years of his ministry, Capernaum. Peter lived here and its where Jesus would heal many people. It is also where Jesus cast a demon out of a man in the synagogue in Capernaum. This was one of a very few places on our tour that we can be certain that Jesus was in that place (Mark 4:13). The ruins of the synagogue date back to the early first century and Jesus would heal many from Peter’s house, even Peter’s mother-in-law.

For us to truly understand a family we needed to go to a town called Chorazin. We learned what an "insula" was, and I will try and do it some justice here. When a man and a woman moved to a new place and had a son, when the son became of age, he would marry a woman and add two walls and a half wall to his father’s house. The father would be the Patriarch and the son would begin a family of his own.  If they had a girl, the girl would be married to someone else, and the mother-in-law would begin to teach and help her daughter- in-law learn the ways of the family. When the son had a son of his own, and that son got old enough to have a family, he would build on to his father’s house and they would live in an insula. This brought a whole new understanding for us to, “In My Father’s house there are many rooms…”

Our second to the last stop of the day was the Mount of Beatitudes. It was just up from Capernaum, maybe a thirty-minute walk up the hill. This is where Jesus would teach the infamous Sermon on the Mount. Tabgha, Capernaum, and Mount of Beatitudes was run by Franciscan monks and controlled primarily by the Catholic Church. The sights were beautifully maintained, and you could see monks walking around in their robes and in some cases teaching because it was Sunday. It was awesome and amazing to be in the places where Jesus would do so much for the region of Galilee.

Our last stop was the Sea of Galilee boat ride. We left the dock about 45 minutes before sunset and enjoyed an amazing time of worship, laughter as some of us tried to dance, and an awesome time enjoying the sunset on the sea of Galilee. This day could not have gotten much better, but I know that our time is just beginning to prepare us for what is coming very soon, our time in Jerusalem.