How magnificently the old city rests, nestled into a modern world building itself around it.
This second day of tour was entirely spent in the Old Jerusalem. We started at the Western wall, making our descent into the tunnels that run below the Temple, on 1st Century Streets and re-emerging at the Pool of Bethesda pictured above. It was known to be an attraction to those in need of serious healing. Here Jesus healed a man who had lived his life of 38 years paralyzed. How defeated and hopeless he must have felt to have waited so long to be healed. He must have given up on entering into the waters of his restoration because he had no help. How often do I walk through life defeated!! All it took from Jesus was to say, “Get up and walk!” and his whole life was changed. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wait 38 years in stuck, waiting for someone, anyone to help me when I can ask Jesus for healing.
After this, we began our trek along the Via Dolorosa, the path He walked carrying that Cross that rescued me. On that street called mercy, that path of suffering, I could hear His voice ringing in my ears saying, “I carried that Cross and I felt your pain. I took up your crown and I wore your shame.” What better place to be reminded of how forgiven I am, than on the road to a painful death that lead to my salvation.
We stopped in this massive church with lines out the door waiting for people to see the place of Christ’s burial. Inside, there were several tombs and different holy objects. Our tour guide took us to a small room that by Syrian Christian tradition, was most likely the tomb belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, where Jesus was temporarily buried. It seemed so true, because it was so simple. While it is disputed where the tomb really was and we do end up visiting another site of potential later on, it was as if He was reminding us that His death was not as important as His resurrection.
“I left it behind, with all your sins.”
Rejuvenated in faith, we moved on. We stopped briefly in the Herodian Quarter, also known as the Beverly Hills of the Ancient City according to our tour guide. All the rich of the land had these houses with interact art carved into their walls and still intact furniture. We re-entered the Jewish Quarter and stopped for lunch before moving onto one of my favorite spots in the ancient city.
Mentioned only a handful of times in the Bible, we entered into the ruins of the City of David. King David and the Israelites invaded Jerusalem, taking hold of it from the Jebusites. Generations later, his descendant King Hezekiah decided to protect the water source of the city from Assyrian invaders by using a tunnel system.
We made our way through the web of channels below and found ourselves at a crossroads. Either go around or wade knee to waist deep in a tunnel 1,750 ft. long. Pitch black, with just enough space for one person to go through, we walked in a train and sang praise to the Lord. At one point, we simply stopped and let our voices echo as we proclaim how GREAT our God was. I could’ve stayed in that moment forever. How magnificent a place to simply breathe in His presence, undisturbed by the noise of the city around us or by the thousands of tourists making the same journey as we were.
How exhilarating it was to praise Him in the cold, refreshing water, in a cave that had been hand craved out by from both sides, meeting in a point in time where everything stood still.
Exiting the tunnel, we entered into the Pool of Siloam, a now dry trench, where Jesus sent a blind man to wash for his healing so that the work of God might be displayed in him. While controversy arose around this man, he looked to Jesus with eyes wide open, in faith. If this day has taught me anything, it was to really believe in all that He has done and walk out in faith. What many might speculate about, was actually taught as history. Walking these streets proved that. Everywhere we turned, it was as if the Bible was jumping off the pages.
We ended our tour day on a bit more of a sobering note.
We spent the last hour and a half of our day walking through Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Now I could’ve skipped this in my writing because it didn’t necessarily have to do with the Bible but it was too important not to address. I felt a massive amount of fundamental healing that needed to happen in this place.
Even as a Muslim, this broke my heart. In middle school, I had had my first Arab identity crisis over World War 2 and the Jews. My whole life I had been taught to believe one thing about them. But this changed everything. Wandering through this monument, I couldn’t help but sob. I had spent so much time trying to reconcile how to feel about a people who had been massacred and put to the slaughter and what I was told I had to accept.
Unlike ever before, I felt attached to these people, who had hopes and dreams, who loved and lost, who wanted so desperately to know they belonged, to be welcomed and understood, who were frankly at their core, human. As I witnessed the atrocities done in every room in that building, from shoes left behind in gas chambers, to the stories of children who simply wanted to go to school, to the names on that walls of people who wanted to simply live, my heart grieved.
It lamented for every soul lost, for every soul currently going through trauma across the globe, for every human heart so filled with anger, mine included. I felt so humbled, so overcome by the murder I had committed in my own heart, so confounded by the suffering, yet suddenly peace as I felt the Spirit remind me, to turn my eyes upon Jesus and to look full in His wonderful face. The things of this earth truly grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.
I had asked for healing in my heart of this trip and Jesus delivered in such a painful place. While I do not make light of the lives lost, nor do I take advantage of the pain and suffering, I am grateful that Jesus uses whatever method He sees fit to speak to us. This whole day was filled with wild emotion from start to finish and this was just day 2.
