I’m going to Israel in Jan-Feb 2022. Wanna go with me?
The dates are January 25-February 3, 2022.
Make sure that you use the following when registering:
Host Name: Munger Place UMC
Host ID: 52701
Email my awesome assistant Rosemary Cole.
I'm leading a trip to Israel in January-February 2021.
Wanna go?
I’m going back to Israel in 2021. Who’s in?
The dates are January 26-February 5, 2021.
You don’t have to be at member at Munger Place Church to go, so feel to invite family and friends.
We’ll have an info meeting at Munger immediately following the 11 AM service on 1/26/20, noon to 1 PM.
From the Galilee we took the route to Jerusalem that Jesus would have taken: not the western route along the Mediterranean, via the Roman road, nor the central route, through Samaria, but the eastern route, along the Jordan River. When we arrived at The Dead Sea, we made the steep climb from Jericho through the Judean Desert, took the modern tunnel that cuts through one of the many hills that encircle Jerusalem, and when we came out, there it was.
People will tell you that the Grand Canyon is majestic, and probably every American has seen photos and videos of it. But the Grand Canyon itself, when you see it in person, is more astounding than the hype. I remember the first time I saw it it literally took my breath away.
Yosemite Valley is the same way. Many of us have seen pictures of it and heard how beautiful it is, but when you enter the tunnel through the heart of the mountain and emerge and see the valley before you--El Capitan and Half Dome and the surging waterfalls--it's better than you anticipated.
That's how it was for me when we came out of the tunnel through Mount Scopus, took the curve and saw Jerusalem across the Kidron valley. A place I'd heard about my entire life, a place I'd wanted to visit, only to get there and find that the actual experience of being there was better than I'd hoped.
The psalmist wrote those famous words from Psalm 137 while in bitter exile in Babylon. My life in Dallas is not bitter, and I'm glad to be back home, but I understand the ancient poet's words. I have much more to say about my first visit to the Holy Land, but let this suffice for now: I loved every minute of being in the land of the Bible, and I never want to forget what it was like to see Jerusalem for the first time.
If you sign up for my Andrew Forrest newsletter, I’ll send you a white paper I’ve written called “The Simple Technique Anyone Can Immediately Use to Become a Better Communicator”.
I’m also blogging through the Gospels each weekday in 2019 (though I've not written anything while I was in Israel), and I have a separate mailing list for folks who only want to receive the Gospel posts. Subscribe here to receive a weekday update on that day’s Gospel reading.
These last few days I've been in the Galilee, in the north of Israel, and it is the particularity of the place that's made the biggest impression on me: it was on this beach that Jesus called to Peter and the others when they'd been fishing all night and caught nothing; it was on this lake where Jesus calmed the storms; it was this hillside on which Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount; it was in this synagogue in Capernaum where Jesus taught from the Torah; it was this cliff outside of Nazareth from which the neighbors of Jesus tried to throw him, etc. Of course, there is no way to know that it was this exact spot on this beach, or this exact spot on this hillside, or this exact spot on this cliff, but that's not the point. The point is that these things actually happened, and they happened somewhere right here--if not this exact location, then it was another nearby. The reason this has hit me so hard is that history can be difficult to believe in: I can know intellectually that the Battle of Gettysburg happened, but it's still hard to feel that it happened. Being here has made me feel what I already believed intellectually: Jesus really lived.
From my first few days in Israel, that's been my biggest lesson: Jesus was actually here. And if he was, that changes everything.
Being here has made me feel what I already believed intellectually: Jesus was actually here. And if he was, that changes everything.
If you sign up for my Andrew Forrest newsletter, I’ll send you a white paper I’ve written called “The Simple Technique Anyone Can Immediately Use to Become a Better Communicator”.
I’m also blogging through the Gospels each week day in 2019, and have a separate mailing list for folks who only want to receive the Gospel posts. Subscribe here to receive a weekday update on that day’s Gospel reading.
Long flight and no sleep, but worth it. We just arrived in Israel and came directly to our hotel on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It is serenely beautiful.
It's hard to describe what it's like to have heard about something one's entire life and then to actually see it.
Grateful!
I'm in the Holy Land with 86 folks from our church. My plan is to blog and post as I go. Wish you all were here, too.
If you sign up for my Andrew Forrest newsletter, I’ll send you a white paper I’ve written called “The Simple Technique Anyone Can Immediately Use to Become a Better Communicator”.
I’m also blogging through the Gospels each week day in 2019, and have a separate mailing list for folks who only want to receive the Gospel posts. Subscribe here to receive a weekday update on that day’s Gospel reading.