The Promised Land

What a complex story of struggle Israel and the area has!  And all of it is wrapped around the greatest story ever told!  To walk through Capernaum, see the beauty of the Sea of Galilee and know what Jesus was preaching there so long ago, was incredible.  But yet, it seems terribly sad that the world hasn't evolved enough, after so long, to at least understand that while we may seem different to each other, we are all the same!  That said, there were some real strange characters there!  :)

Our week-long trip to Israel became what seemed to be a Middle-East history lesson.  I felt like the complexities of the history of the region were never really taught to me with much detail. Maybe the stories were just too complicated to explain to a grade schooler in the 1970s?  Or maybe as someone who grew up in a predominantly Italian Catholic neighborhood, just outside the great city of Chicago, the schools there didn't feel that anything but the story of Jesus mattered. Certainly it wasn't that the story of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 had more impact on the history of mankind! That story was explained to us many times in vivid detail!   Maybe the course work there should have been called Ignorant American History.  That's right, I'm blaming the elders for my ignorance!

Israel's ancient history of change, with all the different civilizations and rulers there, in an almost constant struggle for peace, is mind boggling!  Each of the tour guides we had, tried to address it, to different degrees, with many different angles, at the start of each tour.  Their knowledge of the Bible, the history of the entire Middle East and the relationship of the two, was excellent and added so much to our experience.

I hope I didn't offend anyone with my comments or opinions on what we saw there.  But first of all, I should just hope someone reads this at all.

As our tour guide Amir said as we finished our day with him..."we all come from different backgrounds, we've all had different experiences, we speak different languages and we interpret things our own way.  We are all entitled to our own opinion.  If we can recognize that and have empathy for each other, the world would be a better place".  Ya know, think of your fellow man, lend him a helping hand, put a little love in your heart.  Or as a guy from Chicago might say... "lighten up! and just keep movin!"