A PRAYERFUL EXPERIENCE 

Anyone who prays does not need to be in the Holy Land to pray, and many of us have seen hills, prairies, and arid landscapes before. What makes going to the Holy Land different? While it's hard to describe in detail there's something about walking in the streets that David, Ruth, and Christ walked in. Perhaps they didn't walk on the exact same stones we walked, but knowing that on this soil the great figures of our faith walked is an incredible feeling.

After the romanticism of it all settles, however, a new feeling comes to mind: the humanity of our faith. Ours is a faith situated in time and space and not in ideas and the ethereal. Walking through the streets one can hear someone yelling at someone else, and it could be friendly yelling, too. You can see friends hanging on each others shoulders, people gathered around merchants, and crowds of people sitting and talking. It's easy to see scenes in the Bible as stained-glass windows, images, or with clean production values, but there's really a sort of chaos to living in the Holy Land, and it's very refreshing. It forces us to reflect on Scripture in a new way.

We as pilgrims begin to see that Jesus lived in chaos, in dirt, in day-to-day life, and among flesh and blood people. It's easy to imagine, but there's nothing like living it. Certain forms of prayer call us to imagine ourselves on the boat, at the hillside, or in the synagogue, but there's an added layer of reflection when you're doing it yourself. We walk down various streets as the sun beats on our backs, we get dehydrated from going up and down stairs, and we get exhausted after a long day. But then we lay in our beds and, hopefully, feel like we experienced life in some small way like our fathers in faith had.

If we allow ourselves to we can put our whole bodies into our prayer and pilgrim experience. The soil beneath our feet echoes with all the passages of Scripture we've remembered and have forgotten. Discovering them again and placing them in our memory in a new, physical way has been one of the many blessings we've experienced.