walking with Jesus, part b

In 2015 I visited Palestine and Israel. Two weeks plus I walked East and West Jerusalem and Bethlehem; Gaza and Tel Avi; I walked.

When we landed in Tel Avi airport at 5:30 in the morning and bused it with our pick up to Jerusalem, ie was too early that Saturday morning to check into our hotel.

But it was a real good hotel. We can stay in the lobby, but hey, Priscilla and I were ‘up’.

So we grabbed a cab from the front of the hotel and I did what I always did in a new unfamiliar place: the driver I asked where we wanted to go and I said,

we just landed from London. Where would you go, early, this Saturday morning? Take us there.

Well, he went through a list ( like most people I ask this question- what do you like? A museum? A restaurant? …)

I stopped him: no.

Where would you go this beautiful, sunny morning for a time? Today. Not Tomorrow; not yesterday; not tonight. Right now. Your choice, tell us and we go.

He said Ok. He drove us to the top of the Mount Olives; told us to get out and as the sun rose to walk down the Mount to the Garden of Gethsemane. He would meet us in two plus hours. So we walked, from the beautiful height of Olives where we could see Jerusalem’s wailing wall and the white sepculars graves on its hillside.

We walked where Jesus walked every day before his teaching in the temple and each night when he left.

All I could think of at first was: boy, was Jesus in good shape. But then, on each level, I saw the olive trees and the churches from different countries; the many birds and how my view of the city deepen as I waked.

I thought of this verse from Matthew, 26,

^‘30 ‘When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.’

Jesus sang Psalm 118, the last of the traditional Passover dinner hymns before he walked. He sang,

¹ Give thanks to the Lord,for he is good;^(B)
his love endures forever.

² Let Israel say:
“His love endures forever.”
³ Let the house of Aaron say:
“His love endures forever.”
⁴ Let those who fear the Lord say:
“His love endures forever.”

The Mount of Olives was Jesus spacious place; his disciples were his spacious place; the Garden of Gethsemane was his spacious place. The cross is his, and our spacious place. Here all transgressions are as far apart as the east from the west. ( Psalm 103: 10 )

Walking with Jesus, in a spacious place.

Tags: a spacious place, Jerusalem, walking