Wake Up The Echoes

I'm jump around days here, but in real time I'm back home in Virginia now, so it's time to get caught up on the blog. On late Thursday afternoon, after the visit to the Lebanese border and the Kibbutz, we drove down through the mountains, to the sea of Galilee, and across the River Jordan -- which isn't so wide.

The first few days of the trip dealt primarily with the politics in Israel – we had boots on the ground at the exciting time a Likud-Labor unity government was being built. Then, the focus of the trip shifted to security – starting with Yad Vashem and the lessons of the Holocaust to point out that the Jews had a recent reason to dig their boots into their land. Now, it is shifting more towards historical/Biblical Israel. That’s not to say history wasn’t covered early (certainly as we talked about Jerusalem), or that security was not a focus of our visit to the Golan Heights. But the days had themes, and we moved into the stories of yesteryear (going back well before the age of Jesus.

Adter we checked in, I wandered down to the beach at the Sea of Galiliee. With the exception of the lights of the houses, you can feel that the area is similar to the time of the Christ. It was an emotional moment for me. There is a very spiritual feel to that area – to me, much more so then in Jerusalem, because of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre covering up the land where Jesus was crucified, died, buried, and rose again from the dead.