Israel 2019: Eastern Hills and Watermark Wesleyan Church

It feels like God has some geographic bias.  We read about Mt. Horeb that God gave the Law there, and later refreshed and redirected a depressed Elijah.  Earlier in our trip, we learned that just as Peter gave his confession of Jesus being the Christ at the foot of Mt. Hermon, outside of Bania (Caesarea Philippi), so also Jewish tradition holds that it was up on Mt. Hermon that God made the covenant with Abraham.  We also believe that the “very high mountain” that was the site of the transfiguration was also on the same mountain.  Today, we visited another place of God’s geographic bias:  the Temple Mount. After a later night last evening, we had an early morning, leaving our hotel at 7:30 to try and beat the long line to go up on the Temple Mount.  We entered the line just outside the Dung Gate.  To our surprise, it did not take us as long a time to get through two security checks on get up on the top.  We had to be careful with couples holding...

I’m sure the title brings the song into your head.  In fact, Ann sang it for us as we stood in the courtyard of one of the church’s claiming that it all began here.  But before we went through the stations of the cross, we began our day entering the Old City through the Lion’s Gate (or Shepherd’s Gate or Stephen’s Gate).  It was here in 1967 that an Israeli paratrooper brigade broke through and around to the Wailing Wall, raising the flag over the Old City. Once inside, we walked to the nearby Pool Of Bethesda.  The Hebrew means pool of mercies and the Lord demonstrated that by healing the man who was crippled for thirty eight years.  (John 5). We sang inside St. Anne’s Church there, and it was glorious. We then walked the Via Doloroso all the way to the top of the Church of the Holy Sepluchre.  Even Nir had never seen the city so crowded.  We had to get over being polite Americans just to survive the jostling.  The church was so packed that h...