By Kandy Cosper
 
You have walked through the pages of the Bible, the ancient hills of barren stone and waving trees budding with olives and figs. You have placed your dusty sneakers where Jesus placed his sandalled feet, spread his healing hands, and spoke his loving, challenging words. You have knelt to touch the stone floor of the cave in which he lay in a manger.
On the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus walked on water and calmed a storm, you have wandered among lush trees and red flowers on the Mount of the Beatitudes, where five thousand hungry pilgrims, two thousand years ago, learned what it means to be blessed. You have matched the steps of the donkey bearing Jesus through the cheering crowd on the Palm Sunday Road. You have tasted bread and wine inside the serene Garden of Gethsemane, where he prayed with sweat falling like drops of blood while his disciples slept. You have followed his bare feet as he carried his heavy wooden cross up the hill.
 
On your journey, places and people from the Old and New Testaments have come vividly to life. Jericho, Caesarea, Sinai, Capernaum, Hebron, Shiloh, Jaffa, Masada, Bethlehem, Nazareth; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ruth, David, Saul, Samuel, Mary, Pilate, Paul, Peter, Mary Magdalene. You have climbed among the rocky ruins of King Herod’s Palace at Masada, the ancient fortress on the shores of the Dead Sea. And in those waters, you have felt the salt lift you as you floated.
 
You have ridden on a camel as the wise men following the star. You have eaten eggplant, lamb, raw vegetables and bread soaked with olive oil, and native fruits from biblical lands. You dipped your fingers into the water of Jacob’s Well and gazed at Qumran caves, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. You have listened to the haunting chant of the Moslem call to prayer throughout each busy day. You have seen intricate designs of more than a hundred colorful tiles at the Church of the Pater Noster – “Our Father” – where Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer. Each tile is from a different country with the prayer in its own language – and you have seen that the tiles of Ukraine and Russia are almost side by side.
And you have stood at the center of Historic Jerusalem, the center of faith for three great world religions tracing their origin from Abraham: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. At the Holy City on a hill, the huge, golden-domed mosque, the Orthodox churches. You have spread your palms on the Hebrews’ Wailing Wall and stepped aside for joyful Bar Mitzvah processions with the music of ancient instruments.

Then one day – can it possibly have been only nine days since you left? – you are back home. And someone asks, “How was your trip?”
 
You find yourself thinking not just of the old paths you walked but the modern ones, as well. Your tour bus has climbed from the flower-thick Israeli settlements, new neighborhoods of well-kept residences with water tanks on top, immaculate parks and gleaming businesses, and into the West Bank, home to refugees. Up the steep roads littered with trash, empty containers, flat tires, and rusted cars that the government does not pick up. Parched land, tiny shops, huts with no access to water, and men and women standing outside in the searing heat. It is a section of the Holy Land designated by agreement among foreign governments in 1948 and 1967 for Palestinians to gather so that Jews, many displaced during World War II, could move into the land that was promised to them in the ancient scriptures

Your bus has glided through the military checkpoints of armed guards, past the miles of detained cars of Palestinians seeking work, lost relatives, and confiscated family orchards dating back centuries. You have passed guards in brown and black uniforms, machine guns over their shoulders, checking credentials. You have startled at weapons fired on the street outside your hotel in the unrest following the death of a young Palestinian boy. He was among the surging crowd that was fired upon while mourning the assassination of the renowned Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh; the Israeli government had decreed that only ten people were allowed to attend the funeral, but crowds had gathered.  

You have stood like the stones around you in the profound silence of the once-bustling marketplace of Hebron, home to the Tomb of Patriarchs, now eerily deserted except for the armed guards watching you. That ancient city of 200,000 Palestinians, one of the scattered “swiss-cheese holes” on the map of Israel that is designated for them to live. Controlled by hundreds of armed and uniformed soldiers, the IDF (Israeli Defense Force), who are charged with protecting the 850 Jews who moved into a new settlement there.

You have asked questions of a sheik in colorful robes and headscarves who tells you about Islam in Israel. You have felt your breath catch as a man and woman assigned for many years to the Military Court Watch describe teenaged refugee boys, accused of throwing rocks, dragged from their beds at night to spend months in jail. You have heard the confessions of a young woman estranged from her Jewish family for joining Breaking the Silence, an organization of Jewish people devoted to telling the story of the Arab refugees.

You have tried not to look away from the horror of the stories and photographs of the Holocaust at the museum in Jerusalem, beyond words to describe the anger, disgust, and despair you felt. Overwhelmed at the cruelty, violence, and suffering in the world that God created for good.

You have wiped away tears inside a hillside cave, where you met with the leader of the Tent of Nations. Daioud is an Arab farmer who refuses violence, devoting his life to overcoming barriers, building self-sufficiency, and fighting violence with love. With international volunteers, he hosts children’s camps and women’s empowerment programs. You heard his story – how he has been appearing in court repeatedly for nearly 40 years with proof that the land has belonged to his family for centuries. But he has no running water and, every time he plants new trees, they are sawed down by soldiers during the night. You hear his voice inside your head: “We want to use our frustrations and disappointments constructively; to transform energy we need to do things positively, rather than becoming a seed-bed for anger and bitterness.” You have snapped a picture of the rock at the entrance, painted in three languages: “WE REFUSE TO BE ENEMIES.”

And your friends are asking, “How was your trip?”

Thinking back, you hear the music of the ouds, guitars, and voices of relaxed students outside Dar-al-Kalima University, a Covenant mission partner in Bethlehem – a different kind of school that encourages freedom, creativity and self-expression. You revisit the Walled-Off Hotel, up the stairway where fine artwork conveys the searing pain of separation and loss. You hear the voice of your guide – the wonderful Iyad, a Moslem with Israeli citizenship who, with his deep faith in God, has shared more knowledge of the Bible, history, faith, politics, and perspective in one week than you have ever known before.

You have patronized grateful shopkeepers, already struggling to keep their businesses with the apartheid restrictions and then the pandemic, who greet your guide, ministers, and leaders with hugs. They are friends. They sell you silly pink stuffed camels and beautiful Bethlehem crosses as Iyad kindly helps the children selling wares on the street, passing around their colorful scarves and pictures. You hear the voice of the owner who declares, as you leave, “WE BREATHE THE AIR OF YOUR LUNGS.”

And – a highlight of a trip full of highlights – you have seen the children dancing. On a hilltop in Nablus, you have been greeted by boys and girls smiling and jumping with excitement at the gates of Tomorrow’s Youth Organization, a mission partner of Covenant Presbyterian Church. Their leader is down on one knee with her arms wide open to welcome you. They serve you lunch in their clean, spacious building, a former college. They meet with you about all they are doing to help change the lives of the children and families of Balata refugee camp, one of many such camps for those forced from their homelands. Signs of gratitude to Covenant Presbyterian Church line the halls. The playground provided through Covenant’s generosity from the Christmas Eve offering is nearly finished – the only patch of green play space for the hundreds of children in the entire camp. In flowing, indigenous costumes, to indigenous music, the children perform a spirited dance just for you.

So, “How was your trip?”

Only it wasn’t just your trip – it was our trip, thirty of us, together. It was shared within a congenial group – young and old, college students and retirees and in between – who have became good friends during comfortable bus rides, the fresh Mediterranean meals, laughter, jokes, deep conversation, and prayer. The coveted “Camper of the Day” award. What you learned about each other and the world. It was the deep gratitude for Bob and Suzanne Henderson who have guided you here, for the masterful way they led your walk together through history and faith. The buttons that the group wore at the trip reunion: “I kept up with Bob Henderson in the Holy Land,” with a photo of indefatigable “it’s-just-around-the-corner Bob.”

You could point out that we make important decisions about where we go and how we spend our time, and choosing this trip was life-changing. You could try the adjectives: inspiring, joyful, fun, challenging, heart-warming, heart-breaking, troubling, moving, ugly, beautiful, and many more. You could say that people are hateful to each other. That people are loving to each other. But your words would not be capturing what you really need to say -- all that you saw and came to understand; all that you saw and will never understand.
In walking those steps of our ancestors and our fellow human beings on this earth, in walking those steps of Jesus, you have realized that God who created us all has worked throughout history to show us who God is and how we are to live and treat one another. That God is the hope that gets so many people through the day. That God walked on this earth, too, and we are called to walk in his way wherever we are.

So here is what you finally answer to “how was your trip?” You tell a story that each of us will hear in our way.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, just as your Christian group was praying, just as you were lifting to your lips the bread and wine bought for you by the family of your Moslem guide, the Muslim call to prayer rang out over the Holy City. A haunting, chanting voice. And you understood this: “We are all God’s children. God is faithful. God calls us to speak this truth in love and live in peace.”