So being Monday, this was our second field trip day. This was a good one too because this is one of the only times that we get to go into the West Bank to see some of the sights there. It is actually really sad that we don't get to go there more like in the past. There are so many things to see that are in the West Bank, but alas, the PA (Palestinean Authority) isn't too prone to having too many guests at times, and so we have to be careful. But today our journey took us from Jerusalem into the Judean Wilderness to Jericho.
I'd love to say that along the way we got captured by theives and finish the parable in my own life, but alas I guess that i'm going to have to liken the scriptures to myself some other way! We traveled first to a little stop that was an overlook of the Judean Wilderness. It was a great place to stop beucase you could look to the west and see Jerusalem, and then look to the east and see Jericho. These places are so much closer than one would think by looking at a map! From this vantage point you could also see the elevation change going from Jerusalem to Jericho, which is about 3500 feet! Seeing the wilderness that so many different people traveled through back in the day was somewhat humbleing. It was quite windy, and so it was not very clear because of all the dust in the air, but that helped with the sun, which was really hot. I can't even imagine how much hotter it would have been with direct sunlight (i need a hat!). Anyway, one little insight that I had there was about the Parable of the Good Samaritain. So we know that the Samaritain is Jesus, right? and the man is us. The innkeeper is often though of as the church, so with that said, I thought about how the Lord finds us in sin, bloodied on the road and needing His help. And then He takes us up, and really brings us to the church, and then He leaves. We don't really ever see Him while in this life, but then He comes and get's us once we have healed with the help of the church. Jesus gives us the initial help that we need to get to the church, he pays the price of being here for us, and then he leaves it to us to get healed with the help of those that He has given us to, which I think could also include the families that we are put in, friends that we make, etc. So yeah, there was my little insight for this place.
Our next stop was in Jerico itself. We went to this place called the Quarantal Monastery which is a not-so-old-but-built-on-a-place-where-there-used-to-be-a-similar-building Greek Orthodox place for monks. This is a neat building because it's really only one little hallway with a church and chapel at the end of it, but the reason that it's like that is becuase it's built right into a cliff rock face!! If you were to fell out one of the windows, it would be at least a 200ft drop till you hit something. Hiking in the heat was quite a little journey as well and one of the people in my group said as we were trying to get up there, "No wonder they are hermits and stay away from the world if they have to make a hike like this to get home every day!" This is the place of one of the temptations of Christ and there is a little stone in the chapel that is supposed to be the stone that Satan told Christ to turn into bread. The stone they have there does look suspiciously like a loaf of bread.... but i'm not really sure about the location myself... anyway. It was amazing to see the lifestyle that many of the hermits would live though, and it's quite amazing how far they go to follow the example that they got from the Lord. This place was unique for one other reason. In the dome of the church, there was a mural which depicted God the Father with the Holy Spirit. This was amazing becuase only very rarely is the Father actualy drawn as a person, so yeah, pretty neat.
We then quickly drove past the Zacchaeus Tree (find the story!) and got a couple pics, and then we went on to see Herod's winter palace. We didn't actually get to go to the ruin, but we saw them across the wadi, and it would have been an impressive little place in his time. It really is amazing how much wealth there was and how much it was used. Although even Herod was dwarfed by the Egyptians (3 more days!!!), so yeah.
We also went to Tel-Jericho, tel being the prefix meaning the ancient place where the city was back in the day. So i actually saw sections of the wall that would have crumbled for Joshua! I actually coudn't get the veggie tales song out of my head for the longest time! We actually did sing Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho and although we didn't sound quite like the BYU choirs, I think that we gave it a good shot! Tel-Jericho is right next to the Spring of Elisha which is the spring which feeds the whole valley. It's actually really nuts that this city exists. There is nothing but desert around it, and then this little oasis in the middle of nowhere! We couldn't actually see the spring because it's a government builiding the controls the flow now, but we were told by our teacher that it is quite the torrential river flowing out of that thing! So we sat and talked about Jericho and Joshua, and also about how Elisha healed the waters by throwing salt into it. Wierd eh? Little sybolism maybe? eh eh?? haha, anyway, all in all it was agood trip.
The rest of the day was really just spent in doing homework, so that's not too exciting, but this is school over here, so I have to do serious stuff sometimes! Hope you're all having fun! Laters!
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