A Little Taste...

I just came back from Ramallah - did some shopping - finally bought some jeans, and managed to get past the heckling fruit and vegetable sellers. I love Ramallah in the afternoon on a weekday. People flood the sidewalks, sun basks the steets, and for awhile, everyone seems in a good mood.

I tried a new place to eat as well - Chicago Cheesesteak Factory - ok!!! As a Philly girl, I can contest that the cheesesteak I ordered Italian style fit the bill. I will be coming back.

All of this was after our weekly staff meeting - Manal, Nisreen, Ahmad, Imad, and I usually sit around somewhere between 10 am and 12 pm discussing the week ahead, sharing a devotion, and always laughing a lot (there's always usually a lot of bantering back and forth as well - which in Arabic sounds a lot like loud, verbal fighting). Last week I confess my inability to understand Arabic fluently frustrated me overwhelmingly. As a friend has told me - learning a language is a lot like riding a rollercoaster - somedays everything goes right, other days everything you say is wrong.

The big news however is that I was able to spend Holy Week celebrating in Jerusalem. Thursday night I spent overnight at St. George's guest house, after one of the most solemn moments I have experienced here. I attended the footwashing service and was joyfully surprised to learn that afterwards, the congregation would process to the Mt. of Olives, directly to Gethsemane!! I'm glad we did not go to the "Catholic" Gethsemene. As I learned later, that place was overrun with people. Where we went instead was peaceful, quiet, and worshipful - just as it must have been for Christ 2000 years ago. Instead of Roman horses, we heard Israeli police and army cars honking their way past the Temple. As we walked through the East Jerusalem section where St. George's is located, we got a taste of what Christ experienced on his entry to the city - walking past people that could care less about what you are up to, or are rather taken aback and embarassed. The solemnity of Gethsemane seemed to put everything in context...

Early in the morning I arose to walk the Via Dolorosa. Completely unworshipful, it was rather tedious and tiring. I kept looking at my watch to see when it would be over. Cars ploughed through our group, people pushed past our elbows, and you barely had a second to visualize what was going on. The most striking scene occurred near one of the final stations. An orthodox Jewish father and his two young sons walked through our crowd on the narrow Old Jerusalem street. One of his sons who followed him (a boy about the age of 7), stopped very purposefully in the middle of our entourage and spat squarely on the ground in front of bishops who did the reading and said the prayers, as well as the rest of our group who faced them. I'm sure Jesus had more than a few puddles of spit on his face.

Easter Sunday was also somewhat hellish, yet God-redeeming. The service at St. George's was packed. People from all over the world seemed to represent their countries in the tiny sanctuary. However, when I went up for communion, I made the stupid mistake of leaving my bag behind at my seat. At lunchtime later that day, I discovered my camera was missing and 400 NIS cash (almost $100). I never carry that much money around, however I had just gotten "paid" from my stipend, and who knew what I would do and where I would go that afternoon?

All in all, it was another lesson in "rejoicing in every circumstance," which I so dutifully studied a few days earlier in 1 Thess 5:17. Trust God to make sure you know it.

So while I won't have pictures to show you of my time (including one of me carrying the Cross!), here are a few I have pulled from the web.

(NOT what the Old City looks like now, but pretty close)

(What the Via Dolorosa looks like today)