Shalom! I'm back from Israel with only minor jet lag. Am trying to catch up on US news since the only newspaper I've read in the last few weeks is the Jerusalem Post, which I highly recommend for keeping up with news in the Middle East. Lessons from my pilgrimage:
1) Close counts only in horse shoes, hand grenades, and Holy sites. Given the multiple turn overs in occupation and control in the region for the last few millenia, it's hard to tell sometimes which is the actual site, and twhich is the 'traditional' site as designated by the Catholic Church. At first this bothered me, but as our tour guide, Doreen, said, it's more about the symbolic importance than about the actual location sometimes. Although I must say those Byzantines sure knew how to do mosaics and stained glass.
2) Nothing in that area is as black and white as we would like to make it. For every person you talk to with one opinion, you will find another with an opposite opinion. I took a side trip to Bethany, which is just outside of Jerusalem, in the Palestinian West Bank. Our guide was a Palestinian Muslim who was very knowledgeable about the Christian sites in Bethany. He took us to the tomb of Lazarus among other sites. He told us that he believes that those in power keep trying to make the issue of control in the region a religious one when it is really about possession of the land and political power. This was totally opposite of an editorial I had recently read stating that those in power keep trying to make it a political issue when it's really a religious issue. I really don't think we can have one without the other. The political issues are religious, and unfortunately the religious issues are political.
3) True peace in Israel isn't possible until Jesus returns. As simplistic as that may sound I believe that there will be temporary periods of relative peace, but no true lasting peace this side of Jesus return. There are too many different groups with history there, and the future for every one of us, whether we want to admit it or not, lies there.
4) I don't know nearly as much about Judaism or Islam as I should. I was amazed that both our Jewish Israeli guide and our Palestinian Muslim guide knew much more about Christianity than I know about either religion.
All in all the trip was absoultely fabulous. I'm still processing the great amount of information that I've been given over the last few weeks, so I'm sure there will be more later on the subject.
2 comments:
The trip was a gift from God and how it was paid for it is not the issue. What God taught me is. Please don't redirect the issue to money, and please also refrain from commenting on other people's financial status on my blog site.
The Cindy I knew when you and I were in a journalism class at UT was not a wasteful person with out of control spending.
If you really had a bad situation with creditors and had to reneg on your financial pledges, I for one cannot see how anyone could impute anything bad.
Credit card companies are notorious for preying on students.
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