Greater capacity to love

Great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise, in the city of our God, his holy mountain. Walk about Zion, go around her, count her towers, consider well her ramparts, view her citadels, that you may tell of them to the next generation. For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end.
PSALM 48:1;12-14

As we walked about the ramparts of Zion in silence today, we reflected on our time here and were challenged to pray about how we will be a good steward of this experience. How will we impart and share of this land to our communities and to the next generation?

While walking I thought of how soon many of us will be asked, "How was your trip?" Or "What was the most impactful part of your time in Israel?" And I began to be overwhelmed at thinking of how I would answer either of those questions. How do you put this time in the land into a two minute answer? How do you fully communicate what it feels like to walk and pray and to see the places you have read about for years? The reality is no one will fully understand what we have felt until they have come and experienced the land for themselves, but for us as leaders and pastors and communicators of the faith, we will take the things we have learned into how we how we teach and read the Word. We will hopefully take the importance of rest and the gift of joy and the beauty of hospitality that we have learned from our Jewish friends into our own lives and to impart them into our own communities.

This trip has come to a close but in many ways in each of our hearts, it is beginning to come alive. For it will be days, weeks, months before we will see the fullness of our time here in Israel.

Today was a full day as we ended our time in the land. The bus dropped us off at the Mount of Olives where we walked over to the Garden of Gethsemane and were given time to pray and read the Word alone. We then walked from there into the city of Jerusalem where we entered Saint Anne's Church and all together sang the doxology with incredible acoustics ringing throughout. We sat by the Pool of Bethesda and read/processed the story found in John 5 where Jesus healed the lame man. From there we walked the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre while trying to envision the path Jesus took to the cross. We ended our time in the city at the Ramparts before heading to the Israel Museum to see a model of the city of Jerusalem in the time of Jesus and some of the Dead Sea scrolls found in Qumran.

We looked out onto many incredible vistas and valleys, we walked pathways that pillars of our faith have once been, but my prayer from the time my feet touched this soil was that this trip would give me a deeper understanding of the Word so that I may have an even greater capacity to love The Father, Son and Holy Spirit even more. I would say it was a prayer well answered.

Rachel Closs