And Away We Go...

By this time tomorrow, I'll be boarding a plane bound first for Frankfurt, Germany, then on to Tel Aviv, Israel. By the time our travel is over, sometime in the evening (Israel time) on June 14, we will be settled in a hotel in Tiberas, overlooking the Sea of Galilee. From there, we will explore northern Israel, then the Judean desert, Jerusalem, and then on to Egypt to follow the route of the Exodus (in reverse). We've been planning this trip for nearly 5 years, and it's somewhat hard to believe it's finally here.

This will be my third trip to the Holy Land, though my first time to Egypt, and there are several sites along this year's journey that I've not been to. And it will be the first time I've had the chance to share this pilgrimage with a member of my family—my daughter, specifically. She is very excited for many things...to ride a camel, to walk where Jesus walked, to see the pyramids...maybe even to spend time with her dad!

What about me? Being my third trip, what am I expecting, beyond seeing a few new things? I know that both times I have been to Israel before, I have found it a place that tugs at my heart like no other place on earth. There are the emotions, of course, of just being there, but there is also the realization that, because so many exact places are unknown, every piece of the land is holy, because every place is a place Jesus might have actually set his foot. This is his land. This is the place where God walked among us.

To me, there is nothing like walking the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem...a place which, in some ways, still has a "first century" feel to it. Or gazing out over the Sea of Galilee...where fishermen still work much as they did in Jesus' time. Or standing by the River Jordan and imagining what it was like when John the Baptizer took the Son of God into the water (even as John protested). The stories of the Bible come alive each time I walk in this holy land...and I expect no less this time.

So I invite you to walk with me, to see the land through the eyes of our little group. I'll be posting (hopefully) daily blogs here, and pictures on Facebook and Flickr (follow teknopasto). And let's see together where the stories of Jesus continue to touch our lives through the message of that land that's sometimes called the fifth gospel. Come and see, shall we?