We Made it!

Well, it was a short night. We landed in Frankfurt and I didn’t set my watch to Germany time, so its 2:00 am. But the sun is up and we have already eaten breakfast. No sleep on the plane. Ugh.

We have gotten past the security gate, and the security on the Tel-Aviv flight is the tightest so far. Go figure. We had to do all the regular stuff and we got scanned with a metal detecting wand after we went through the gate. The wand was so sensitive it ‘hit’ on a pack of medicine in the bubble pack with foil on the back about the size of a postage stamp!

Sitting here at the gate, we watched several Jewish men at their morning prayers with prayer shawls and phylacteries. No doubt this will become a much more common sight once we get to Jerusalem, but here it is still a novelty.

It made me think about my own spiritual practice. How important is it that we engage in our spiritual practice when we are out of our normal element? Do you go to chur4ch when you are on vacation? For that matter, how good are we at keeping our spiritual practice even when we are at home?

We arrived in Tel-Aviv about 3:00 pm, boarded our tour bus and rode two more hours to Tiberius on the Sea of Galilee. En route, we passed Nazareth and Mt Tabor, the Mount of Transfiguration. The first impression I have is much like Mark Twain; how small everything is. I’ll bet Mt Tabor (called a “high mountain” in the Gospels, and our guide told us it was the highest in lower Galilee) isn’t higher than the chapel on the hill at MO Ranch! I would guess its 1,000 or 1,500 ft. The Sea of Galilee is similar in its diminutive size. You can see all the way across it at pretty much every point. Not much wider than Lake Mexia, although I suspect it is much deeper. It is set in a bowl, and one of our number commented to me that it is no wonder that the crowds followed Jesus here, because you could see a good sized crowd from across the lake and be inclined to go see what was going on. We start our actual touring tomorrow, and I will try to take and load a few pictures. We have to pay for internet access here, so I will try and make it worthwhile. Now to bed to get some rest for tomorrow.