sabbatical 2019 - Jerusalem Holy Week Walk

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Today we enacted Jesus Triumphal entry into Jerusalem, starting at the Mt of Olives in Bethphage where He was with his disciples before asking for a donkey to ride into the city gates which we could see 1/2 mile across the Kidron Valley. The first church we went in has the altar sitting atop the suggested rock from which Jesus got onto the donkey. Then we walked as pilgrims down the mountain. Then we stopped in the "The Church of Tears", named for Jesus weeping as He knows what is coming. Then passed the oldest Jewish cemetery in the world, on our way to the Garden of Gethsemanee, where olive trees over 1000 years old still reside and bear olives! The rock where we suppose Jesus went to pray in the garden with his disciples (a pilgrim site for 1500 years) was at the foot of this altar, and today many pilgrims went up to it to venerate the site and ask for prayers. The afternoon was spent at the Israeli holocaust museum - a sobering reminder of the atrocities that mankind can do to itself. And I realized unfortunately that we haven't learned much, since in Sudan and Burma and other places, people are still losing their lives because they believe in God differently from their neighbor. And alas Christians have a very poor record at being loving to our neighbor - witness the crusaders in the 11th century when Jews and Muslims were slaughtered at will in the name of God.

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