I feel i’ve done a few steps this last week. The photo is of Josh and myself walking in the Old City.
Over breakfast i heard someone say ‘How was your weekend’. Today is Sunday so of course Banks, Schools and shops are back open.
Today’s sermon in Christchurch was 29mins. Perhaps you feel you have a clear cut calling but if you dont then do the good that God puts in front of you today. Live out your faith and bless others with the God-given love you’ve received. Faith is a verb not a noun.
The songs are projected. Some of them are in hebrew so we have that, and then the translation, and then the transliterated words so you can sing along too. Its quite wonderful singing a song in another language when you realise that others can now sing in their mother tongue.
The preacher asks What do you do when you feel you have nothing to offer? In todays Bible readings you might have heard Jesus challenging the comfortable asking us to learn from the prophet Hosea – I desire mercy not sacrifice.
So what are you to do if you are too poor. What can you bring? Hosea 14v2 says Bring words, bring your heart, offer the fruit of your lips.
Josh and Donna take me into the Old City for the most amazing kebab pita though i do not think i could find the place again. But I am learning to stay close to my guide which is usually Jesus but for this moment is also Josh.
We go out through the Dung Gate and down to David’s City. There’s a sort of walk through museum here where I find that this really is David’s Palace. Oh my.
Down a few steps and who knows where Bathsheba lived, but bullae have been found here that connect to the Bible. There’s even an ancient indoor loo. I took a photo.
Down a few more steps and here’s a shaft, that maybe David used as a verticle tunnel to climb up and capture Jerusalem.
Down a few more steps and here’s Hezekiah’s Tunnel. You can read about this in 2 Kings. Its wet so we take the dry Canaanite tunnel which brings us out by the Pool of Siloam. Oh my!
This is a good day for finding places we read about in Scripture.
Jesus spat in some mud and rubbed it on the face of a blind man and told him to go wash it off in this pool. This is the free and easy Mikvot, a wide ceremonial washing pool. You can be sure that Jesus went through here. Oh my!
And here is the beginning of Pilgrims’s Ascent. It is a path that would have run up from the bottom of David’s City all the way to the Southern Wall of Temple Mount. So we can know that Jesus and His disciples will have walked here. Oh my and oh my! What a great way to end this trip walking on another ground zero point.
This evening I went to church to give thanks to God for the blessings of this week. The only sacrifice I can offer is the one I sing and pray, it is the fruit of my lips as Hosea put it. I’ve listed quite a few in earlier blogs but certainly today it has been Donna and Josh who have been a God-send to me this week. So the day ends with the reminder that in the woship, the word, the sacrament, the fellowship, that Jesus meets with us in our hearts, His ground zero, in you, even in me.