The water looked ice cold, so I wasn’t sure if I would go through with being baptized in the Jordan River. After all, I don’t like swimming in cold water, and I was immersed years ago in ninth grade. I told the rabbi, doing the baptizing, about my hesitation, and then said confidently, “I meant…
“While you were doing all these things, declares the LORD, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen, I called you, but you did not answer” (Jeremiah 7:13). Shiloh, located in Samaria near Shechem, is the site of the first tabernacle, built by Joshua and the Israelites, and was the center…
You feel God’s presence everywhere in Israel, but if I had to choose the place where I felt the closest to Christ, it had to be the Mount of Beatitudes, overlooking the Sea of Galilee. It was there that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, containing the Beatitudes, the Golden Rule, the Lord’s Prayer…
The Dead Sea. Nothing lives in it. No fish. No scavengers. No plant life. And I wondered why. Was it always like this? To find the answer, I turned the pages of history back to the time of Abraham and his nephew, Lot, found in the book of Genesis. You may remember that at one…
“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. “Come and see,” said Philip (John 1:46). Nazareth was Jesus’ boyhood home. When you visit the town today, there is a place called “Nazareth Village” that captures the way life would have been when Jesus was a child. You see a goat herder, a Joseph-like carpenter…