Israel Day Eight

Today may have been my second favorite day on the trip so far; it's close to being my favorite. Today was all about exploring the City of David, which is a little section of Jerusalem to the north along the Kidron Valley. (Think like Fairhaven is a part of Bellingham.) We walked to a place where we could walk through Hezekiah's tunnel. This was a tunnel that allowed water to get into the city from an artesian well in the Kidron Valley and ended at the Pool of Siloam. We were walking through that tunnel! There was water on the bottom up to our ankles. The ceiling was low in some spots where we had to duck down. It was pitch black without our flashlights. It was narrow so that my arms were touching the sides. It was awesome walking through it!

From there we went to the Israel Museum, where they had a huge model of the city of Jerusalem from Herod's time, the time of the Second actual temple. To see the scale of the Temple in comparison to the rest of the city made my jaw drop. It was the most helpful part of the trip so far to see the magnitude of the place. We also saw "The Shrine of the Book" where they housed the complete Isaiah scroll that they found in Qumran. (Although, for our trip, the manuscript was put away and a facsimile was in its place.) It was very cool to see the fragments of papyrus from some of the jars they found in Qumran. (Pastor nerds like me find that kind of thing interesting...)

From there we stopped at King David's tomb. (Which is probably not the place he was buried, but again its in the vicinity.) We stopped by a possible place where the Upper Room may have been, which has since been taken over by the Moslems and turned into a mosque. We sang "Amazing Love" in there that was really beautiful.

The next stop was lunch in a little market area, where I had pizza and a pepsi and where we could overlook the cardo - the main street (think "cardio" = heart = heart of the city) It was Main Street.

We made our way from there to the Western Wall (we know it more as the “wailing wall”). We will spend more time praying at the wall tomorrow, but today, we took a tour alongside the wall down underground. The city has been built up so many years, that the original wall goes under the earth 65 feet. (Again, the Temple is massive.) This was not a day for those who don’t enjoy close quarters or are claustrophobic. Some of the walkways were tight. Anyway, the stones they used to build the Temple were 400-700 tons and 20 feet long at least. Those people were amazing how they moved them around and put them in the right spots. It was phenomenal. I touched history. I am humbled by the opportunity to be here…