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I also had my faith in people restored.
Meeting and talking with several Jewish
people about life and faith was a real
eye opener. For a people who over the
centuries have been persecuted
heavily by representatives of the Church,
you would expect some form of mistrust,
bitterness or resentment. Instead I found
the Jewish people to be loving, warm,
generous-spirited, accepting, tolerant,
compassionate, kind and more than
willing to openly discuss their faith and
ours; in short, a picture of what we as River Jordan
the Church are to be. On Friday a crowd
of school children were released from
school for Shabbat and hurriedly rushed
past our group to their waiting parents. I was utterly thrilled to go on this trip
One little girl in particular caught my eye. with my HK brothers and sisters. My life’s
She had painted a portrait on canvas ambition for many years had been to visit
which she carried in her hands. I told her the Holy Land and here it was, fulfilled.
it was beautiful. A moment or two later I Our fellowship together was sweet,
saw her smile at me as she presented it though I think it can always be
to her mummy to be rewarded with a big strengthened. My own faith was
hug. This served as a reminder to me deepened. As tourists we saw places
that while we may exercise our faith where Jesus had lived, preached,
differently, we have so much more in healed, died and risen “according to the
common than that which divides us. In Scriptures.” I came home more convinced
addition, the people who made up our than ever that God’s word written is true
group began, over the course of the from beginning to end, that his word is
week, to feel like family and given the life “earthed” in Israel; convinced also that
changing experience we shared, I have his living word, the Lord Jesus, makes all
no doubt that the bonds of friendship the difference in the world.
formed in Israel will last for a lifetime.
The wilderness is astounding, starkly
Lynn Robinson beautiful; Jerusalem, strangely, is
beautiful too and is indeed the city of
peace. The finest of religions, Jewish,
Muslim, “Christian” even, jostle for
supremacy there but the Lord Jesus out-
shines them all by far, and one day will
return there as the victorious King
of Kings. Hallelujah.
Mike Ward
Capernaum
