I am taking the chance of a lifetime and visiting the Holy Land from October 27th through November 7th. As I pour over the guidebooks, I find already a spiritual anticipation and shift beginning within. It’s exciting and scary and soul stretching to think that I’ll “walk in the path of Jesus”. Of course, that’s what we promise to do each week at church, to follow Jesus, so this will be a call to do this literally (walking the Via Dolorosa) as well as opening my heart to follow Jesus more fully with each step I take in my life.
I’ve been reading John Philip Newell’s book, The Rebirthing of God, in which one small sentence has captured my imagination and heart ~ “A pilgrimage is a return to our place of resurrection.” I’ve pondered this since if I go to the Holy Land only to see where Jesus was, but it doesn’t help me live more fully into Jesus’, and thus my resurrection, then I think I’ve missed the point. Resurrection implies transformation and new life. Here we go!
I ask that you hold me and my travel companions (Mother Betsy is one of them) in prayer as we gather to be brought deeper into the resurrection of Jesus by being in the land made holy by his presence.