Day Four Video!



We’re exhausted but it has been another incredible day. We’ve seen the very best and the very worst that Israel has to offer. We started the day off at the Mount of Olives. We walked the Palm Sunday Walk that Christ made on his way to mourning & prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his execution. The experience was profound. You pass through the cemetery (in existence for more than 2 millennia) full of the “stones that cry out.” The Olive Tree garden at the Garden of Gethsemane was incredible. The trees are ancient & beautiful. And they are silent witnesses to the most important act in history. The Church of All Nations sits at the end of the walk, annexed to the Garden. We were able to talk our way (you go, Don Smith) into a private portion outside of the church right in the middle of the Garden itself.

We had a powerful worship service right in the garden. Sharing a message about the scriptures that detail Christ’s experience – while you are in the Garden – was supremely humbling. We sang a bit and spread out through the garden for a bit of prayer & reflection. It was overwhelming for many in the group & a religious experience I will never forget.

Then it was onto Bethlehem. Bethlehem was tough. I grew up thinking that Bethlehem was a quaint, chilly city lined with small but homey stables like the kind you see in manger scenes. Kind of an adorable place. Not quite. For starters, the city- all of it – is surrounded by a wall bigger than the Berlin Wall. Put up by the Israeli government, it keeps the population – 30,000 Muslims (70%) & Palestinian-Christians (30%) – contained inside unless allowed to leave by permit only. The wall is huge, lined with angry graffiti & teaming with machine-gun toting Israeli soldiers. They man the check point leading into and out of the city. Entrance into and out of the city is exclusively at the discretion of Israeli military directives. That was our introduction to the place where tradition says Christ was born.

Can you imagine living in Plano, and not being able to leave Plano unless the police granted you a permit? Can you imagine Plano and Frisco being separated by a giant barrier? The politics and history of this situation are complex, but the outcome is shocking. This is one of the most contentious areas on the planet. We were right in the middle of it – to see where the Prince of Peace was born. It didn’t make much sense.

Once inside, we visited the Shepherd’s Field where Luke 2 says the angels spoke to the shepherds as they cared for their flocks and announced the coming of the Christ child. There was a lovely church at this holy site. We toured caves & grottos that housed the shepherds. We sang Christmas carols together in the church & read the Christmas story together. That was powerful.

The Church of the Nativity was less of an experience. Though it is the oldest church in continuous operation, it was overrun with tourists (just like us) trying to see the grotto where tradition says Mary gave birth to Jesus. It was crazy. The entrance was tiny and hundreds tried to push and shove their way inside to see the Silver Star that marks the spot of Christ’s birth. It was unruly & hardly spiritual. Some guy got into it with an elderly lady taking “too long” to take a picture. Nothing says “love of Christ” more than a verbal skirmish at the site of the nativity.

This is the only spot that we have experienced diminishing spiritual returns. In more than a dozen other sites, we have had nothing by positive experiences. But here, there were street merchants about every six inches trying to sell everything from postcards to olive wood flutes. Nonetheless, we were standing and singing Christmas carols right in the middle of Bethlehem. I think everyone would agree that it will impact Advent in every year to come.

One other note before I wrap for the night. Before we left Bethlehem, we stopped by the Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center in Bethlehem. The center is run by a saint of a man named Zoughbi Zoughbi. HPUMC supports this ministry as one of its global mission initiatives. It is a remarkable ministry. Zougbhi is a Palestinian Christian that spends his days teaching people in the middle of one of the most hostile and angry environments in the world how to address conflict, resentment, and anger rather than avenge it. That’s not easy to do in Bethlehem. Talk about a Christ-like ministry. I could not have been prouder of the Center and our church for sowing this seed in a region of the world that desperately needs to bear the fruit of Christ’s love. Israel is full of Holy Places. That’s why we came. But it is also full of holy people, & Zougbhi and his staff are some of them. Please add this ministry to your prayers.

Finally, we headed back to the checkpoint. After a couple of guys with M-16’s boarded our bus to look around, we passed muster and headed back from the West Bank to Jerusalem. We passed once again by the Garden where we started the day. The Bible says Jesus wept here over the city. I can’t help but think that He is still weeping. Blessings and peace until tomorrow.