my thoughts on the holy land

What an amazing trip!

Seriously. If you have never been to the Holy Land before, you need to go! It was the most memorable trip of my life. It was a HUGE blessing to go see and experience the places written about in the Bible with my own eyes. We went from Amman in Jordan, to Sinai in Egypt, and then through Israel, before heading back to Amman to fly home.  Now when I read the Bible, the names of places are not just names, visuals come to mind! I've got more of an interest in the maps at the back of my Bible too!

The different religions was one of the things that struck me the most. There are some really misled people in the world who are very devoted to the rituals and traditions and relics that just seem to cloud them from seeing true salvation by faith in Christ. I treasure Sola Fide (by faith alone) a lot more now... I don't have to wake up at 5am to pray like the muslims do. I don't need to spend all day reading the Torah and bending repetitively in front of an old wall. I don't need to journey to an old church to kiss a stone where Christ supposedly was born. God loves me the way that I am because of Christ. There's nothing that I could do that could make God love me more, and there is nothing that I have done that will make God love me less. God knew what He was getting when He paid for me with Christ's blood, and He still chose to go through with the transaction! Amazing love, amazing grace!

So what else did we do?

We climbed Mt Sinai in the middle of the night to watch the sun rise.

We floated in the Dead Sea.

We viewed (through fog!) the Holy Land from Mt Pisgah's lofty height (sweet hour of prayer style)

We hung out at Jacob's Well in Samaria (a la woman of Samaria with Jesus)

We did our QT in the Garden of Gethsemane

We saw a possible site for Golgotha

We went into the old city of Jerusalem

We waded through Hezekiah's Tunnel

We visited Gehenna (aka Hell)

We sailed on the Sea of Galilee

We saw (and ate) hyssop

We saw several conies on rocks (as mentioned in Proverbs)

We saw wild goats (also mentioned in Proverbs)

We visited Dan

We visited Peter's Mother-in-law's house

We went to Tabitha's tomb

We went to Tel Dan (don't ask me what we told him lol)

We rode camels down Sinai

We picked fives smooth stones from the Valley of Elah, but no Goliath was spotted

We saw and got scolded by Pharisees

We went to Nazareth

We went to the land of the Ammonites

We went to Mt Carmel, but we didn't challenge any prophets there (only a group of Nigerians haha)

We saw a recreated Nazareth Village (as per Jesus' time)

We were at Bethlehem for Christmas!

We sang carols in Bethlehem's Manger Square (including Silent Night in Arabic)... on Christmas Eve!

We saw Beth Shemesh (no golden calf tho)

We saw the stony home of the Edomites (Petra)

We hid from Saul in Ein Gedi (we did a good job because he never found us - well we never found him either)

We saw the cursed site in Jericho

We had a squiz at Herod's crib in Masada

We saw a life-sized wilderness tabernacle

We saw the actual Pool of Bethesda, Pool of Silom and the Spring of Gihon

We didn't get baptised in the Jordan River, but we saw it!

We did QT at the Mt of the Beatitudes

We visited the Mt of Olives

We walked the 'Palm Sunday' route

We ate lunch at Caesarea

We ate icecream at Joppa

We did a lot more!

We took lots of photos

We had lots of fun

We made lots of new friends

We learnt many new things

We loved every minute of the Holy Land!