Day 1: Monday - Jerusalem

Guest blogger Ryan Corcoran here. While Matt's compelling dialogue may be worth waiting for, his jet lag and picky eating have robbed him of adequate creative juices for the evening. He claims he will have one ready for tomorrow morning, but I hold that expectation about as loosely as he was holding his jacket in Hezekaih's tunnel.

For those of you who were not there for that inside joke: Matt dropped his favorite flannel jacket hundreds of feet underground, in a 3000 year old tunnel of flowing water that comes up to your waist in places, built by ancient Israeli's who were preparing the walled city for an attack by the Assyrians.  This tunnel spills out into the Silaom pool, where it is believed Jesus healed a blind man by rubbing the mud from the bottom of the pool over his eyes. The scope of this site was incredible, but in comparison to the multitude of other amazing things we were seeing all day, we wrote it off as a disappointment after it swallowed up such a sentimental jacket.

We started the tour aspect of the day by walking the ramparts of the Old City in Jerusalem and saw the four districts that the city is divided into, and started to gain a perspective of the historical complexity and ongoing tension that exists here. After a classic Mediterranean lunch near the Damascus gate, we walked to the Western Wall and observed the holiest location in all of Judaism. Followed up by a stroll up to the Temple mount to view Islam's 3rd most sacred site: the Al-Asqa mosque. Along with the Dome on the Rock, whose iconic gold dome can be seen from most of Jerusalem, this site is deeply embedded in conflict and turmoil as it was built on the site of the most sacred Jewish Temple which was destroyed in the 70 AD.  A story riddled with occupation, destruction, and rebuilding makes three millennia of history for this very sacred site complicated, to say the least.

If our minds hadn't been overwhelmed by the complexity and awe of what we had seen inside the walls of the Old Town, a stroll outside the wall really drives home the point that everywhere you look is something historically famous and emotionally jarring. Upon the Mount of Olives lie countless burial sites and graves in the Jewish cemetery, holding extreme significance in their faith. Further up the Mount is the Garden of Gethsemane, where it is believed that Jesus is to have prayed regularly with his disciples and most famously the night before his crucifixion.  Before we immersed ourselves in the wonder of the Garden and the accompanying Basilica, we walked even further up the hill to what I took to be the most powerful moment of the day, at a simple lookout high upon the Mount of Olives.  We began to reflect on the significance of everything we saw today, and what we are preparing ourselves to see. Then we read Luke 19:28-44, where Jesus spoke to a crowd from the same hilltop, weeping as he looked over Jerusalem and saw how the people have continued to deny the practices of peace and kept shalom hidden from their eyes. We were struck by the significance that those words hold today, on this land right before our eyes and in our neighborhoods at home.  As our heads were bowed in silence and reverence at the significance of this moment, the hills started to ring with the Muslim call to afternoon prayer. Words don't do that moment justice.

And then Matt lost his favorite jacket in a 3000 year old tunnel.