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betweenandbeloved · 5 years

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Mountain Tops and Valleys

This city and really this country continue to amaze me with beauty and history. We spent the morning in Jerusalem and then ventured out in the afternoon to the Judean Lowlands. The terrain and landscape changes so drastically around here but it makes the scenery so beautiful.

We started the day by venturing up the Mount of Olives and visiting Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem (which is in the West Bank). We met with Ben, the communications director and an ELCA missionary and Paulina a humanitarian worker and representative for the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) at the hospital. The hospital focuses on health and education working to train 1000 students each year in 12 different locations and treating over 700 people a day at the hospital. The Lutheran World Federation employes 500 people to help in its endeavor and only 4 of them are not Palestinian.

The hospital not only provides critical health care to the Palestinian people, but it also provides jobs and training opportunities as well. Staff work with patients to help them get travel permits for medical treatment so they can leave Palestinian territory in the West Bank and Gaza to get to the hospital, as well as helping to organize transportation and housing. They do the best they can, but money always falls short of the need. The LWF wants to expand the hospital and treat more Palestinians, but due to recent cuts in funding (cough, Trump, cough), they are having to look for alternative funding from other sources.

How can you support them?! You can donate through the ELCA or you can also stay tuned for more information on a possible fundraiser the ULS students want to do. The Augusta Vitoria Hospital is home to 800 olive trees that help feed the patients and staff but is also used to make olive oil they sell. They didn’t have any in stock so we are hoping to organize a fundraiser to get some olive oil and raise money for the hospital. I’ll let you know if the proposal gets approved!

The campus of the hospital is also home to the Protestant Church of the Ascension which was built in 1907. It is a beautiful church that was a place of pilgrimage for Germans and then came into the hands of the United Nations who used it as a small hospital when the Israeli State was created in 1948. Since then, it has grown into the amazing place it is today. I highly suggest supporting them: https://community.elca.org/augusta-victoria-hospital

We left the hospital and traveled back down the mountain to visit the Garden of Gethsemane, the place where Jesus went to pray. We had an appointment to worship in the private garden with the Grotto of Gethsemane, the place where Jesus and the disciples slept (Mark 14:37, Matthew 26:40). It was dark and a little chilly when we entered the garden and joined together in a time of devotion. As we started to sing the Taize song “Stay with me, Remain here with me, Watch and Pray” the clouds parted and the sun shined down on our group, filling me with warmth and pulling me out of the song. I looked up at the sky and the clouds were moving faster, passing by, but not over the sun, while we sang and prayed. It was one of those God moments where I just had to stop and marvel.

We had some time to wander around and pray in the garden which was a truly moving experience. We also had the opportunity to visit the Church of All Nations which is built over the rock where Jesus prayed before he was handed over (Mark 14:35, Matthew 26: 36-40). It was cool to kneel at the rock and touch the place where Jesus may have prayed, but it was also a beautiful reminder that it is okay to cry, that it is okay to question, and that we are called to do all of this in prayer wherever we see fit: a rock, a tree, in church, at home, on a morning walk, in the middle of taking a test.

After some beautiful time in the garden, we went back up to the top of the Mount of Olives to a beautiful outlook over all of Jerusalem. This was the view Jesus would have seen when he began his descent down the Palm Sunday path on his way to the city. We then began the descent down the mountain on the Via Dolorosa from the top of the mountain down to the Garden.

I have to say, Jesus was one badass man if he descended down that mountain on an untrained donkey who was walking on palm branches and clothing lining the streets (Luke 19:30); because that was one STEEP hill. I felt like I had to walk leaning backward a little just to keep from tumbling head first down the mountain.

We stopped briefly at the Dominus Flavit Church which means Jesus Wept. It is believed Jesus stopped here just before entering Jerusalem and wept over it (Luke 19:41-44). There was a Mass going on so we couldn’t enter the church, but it had a beautiful view of the skyline of Jerusalem.

When we got to the bottom of the Mount of Olives, we hopped back on the bus to venture to the Joppa Gate into the Christian Quarter of the city where we went to Church of the Redeemer to meet Bishop Sani Ibrahim Azar of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL). When asked what we could do to support the church, Bishop responded that we can come and visit, meet our siblings in Christ, take time to speak with them and understand that they are the minority in this country but are part of a larger support network of people all over the world who prays with and for them.

The ELCJHL has 7 churches with 6 congregations and 4 schools. German missionaries were the first to discover that the Holy Land is not a good place to try and convert someone from one religion to another, so instead, they tapped into the existing Christian community to find out their needs and discover ways to meet them. The church is not in the business of converting, but rather in the business of comforting and supporting those in need. The members of the ELCJHL grew up Christian, they were not converted. The Bishop mentioned that the weekly attendance at church is not that great unless tensions are high, then the pews are filled.

So, if you’re interested in helping out the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, you can pray, you can give to the Augusta Victoria Hospital, but more importantly, or you can work on planning your next pilgrimage to come and explore the Holy Land. I highly advise it, it’s a pretty amazing experience (if you couldn’t tell from my blogs).

After meeting with the Bishop, we ventured off into the mountains and visited the Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin. We got to visit the Bell Caves which is the quarry where most of the stones for the buildings in the community came from. I have to say, I never thought a quarry could be beautiful, but boy this one was. A couple was even getting professional photos taken in it - that’s how beautiful it was. We ventured into a Sidonian burial site and through another water system, looking at ruins and enjoying some beautiful views of the Judean Lowlands.

We continued from there to the stream at the Valley of Elah where we picked up rocks like the ones David used when he battled Goliath (1 Samuel 17:40). We then ventured up to the top of the hill to look down on where the battle took place and spend some time in learning and devotion.

The Valley of Elah is the transitional area between the coastal plains and the mountains, it was an important trade route and was also halfway between the land of the Israelites (south) and the land of the Philistines (north). Emily gave a great devotion around the idea of mountain top and valley experiences in life. We always want to be on the mountain top, but yet in the valley, we often have the most faith in God. For David, his valley experience of battling Goliath was when he had the most faith in God; but when he got on top of the mountain and was King of Israel, he wasn’t the greatest guy - he lost his faith in God.

Maybe those moments in the valley aren’t as bad as we might think. Maybe we just need to shift our perspective a little as to what those mountain top and valley experiences really are. I would love to say that this trip has been a total mountain top experience, (which it has), but it has also had some moments in the valley; both literally and figuratively. Literally, today I went from the top of the Mount of Olives to the Valley of Eloh. Figuratively though, it’s a little more complex. Sure, it’s amazing and might be a mountain top experience to hear about the great work being done to help the Palestinian people, but learning about why they need help in the first place, is definitely a valley moment.

That doesn’t mean these experiences were bad, it just means they were different, eye-opening, insightful, things I didn’t expect. This trip has been a whirlwind of up and down: beauty obscured by walls, welcoming people hidden behind checkpoints, and conflict just barely beneath the surface everywhere. You can’t think about the Holy Land in Jesus’ time, without acknowledging what it looks like today.

Mountain tops and valleys.

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