April 16

 

Said goodbye to Nazareth and journeyed excitedly onward and up to the City On a Hill.  As we went up to Jerusalem I nearly felt like singing a psalmic Song of Ascents.  Jerusalem – the City of David, the City of Christ, the crucible of history.  SO much has happened here.  Here it was that Jesus Christ – the Divine Son, God incarnate – died, was buried, and rose from the dead.  Because of this, because of what happened here, I am no longer a prisoner of self, sin, and satan.  I am no longer afraid of death.  I am no longer controlled or compelled or captivated by death.  I am no longer bound by death.  Jesus conquered death.  Sin is death, and death is created by sin.  Praise God for sending His beloved Son to defeat satan, sin, and death.  Because of my sin and rebellion against God I deserve Hell.  Because Christ was punished in my place, for my sins, as my substitute, I am acquitted.  What a marvelous Savior! …

            We met our generous hosts Milan and Magdina from Slovakia.

We went out and wandered around the old walled city.  The walled city contains, among other things, tightly squeezed old-world cobblestone streets, the Dome of the Rock (sacred Islamic site), the Western Wall or Wailing Wall (sacred Jewish site), the Via Dolorosa (where Jesus carried His cross up to Calvary), and various Orthodox and Catholic churches resting upon alleged holy sites.

We moseyed through the crowded streets toward the Western Wall where apparently ‘the Divine Presence rests.’  It’s a very sad place.  Jews bob their heads and rock their bodies gently and sanctimoniously toward the ‘hallowed’ wall sometimes simultaneously reciting Torah or placing written prayers between the stones and sometimes hugging the wall fervently and whispering prayers into its hard and lifeless surface.  In Truth, the Divine Presence is God’s Holy Spirit given to those who acknowledge Christ as Savior and humbly submit to His exclusive authority as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  The Holy Spirit fills the children of God, which is the Church, the Body of Christ, so the Spirit sustains, sanctifies, and empowers the true believer.  So then, the Spirit does not reside in a wall, or in any other place...

The Old City of Jerusalem is divided up in to four separate quarters – the Christian quarter, the Muslim quarter, the Armenian quarter, and the Jewish quarter.  In this way, it is somewhat of a Faith-centered fork in the road.  It is a meeting point.  It is a junction where the world’s major religions loudly and intensely intersect.  The pressure is concealed but it is nonetheless perceptible.  I look around and see everywhere blind pilgrims bumping heads and tripping constantly over the tangled tassels of their own pitiful self-righteousness, and only strife ensues.  People everywhere are trying to get to God and failing and faltering and sauntering and staggering down twisting deceptive paths.  In this the place of origin of the Greatest Hope the world has ever known, the Greatest Hope is somehow missed and even made void by the ceaseless efforts of a sinful humanity trying confusedly and exhaustedly to somehow attain a measure of their own righteousness.  It breaks my heart.  I wonder, how much more does it break God’s?