What's Important

Hi y'all. It's been over a week. So I started to wonder how important this blogging is. What's really important is that a lot of things have been happening to me here, and fast. So it is important for me to have the chance to sum things up for you.

In the last week, we have learned a lot about the city of Jerusalem, both the current city and the city as it was in the past. Knowing the geography here we only help my better understand the scriptures and the life of Christ. Much of what I have experienced I have not the ability to explain. We went to Mt. Zion last week, which is not the same as Mt. Moriah, the Temple Mount. Mt. Zion rest to the West of the ancient city of David. It is higher and therefore where richer people lived. The Upper Room is commemorated here, being the place where Jesus celebrated his Last Supper. Also it commemorates the spot of Pentecost. An upper room was was only in rivh homes, etc. Everything fits together quite nicely.

Beneath the upper room is commemorated the tomb of King David. I understand that it was the crusaders who began this tradition. Supposedly that was where David was thought to be buried at that time. Now this place is a synagogue. So it seems that Catholics and Jews have helped each other commemorate this very site.

Now also significant was our guided tour through the city of David. This is outside today's city walls and south of the Temple Mount. This was an impregnable little outcropping with sharp slopes heading to the valleys below on either side. The Jebusites occupied this city before David wisely made it his capital. David himself was from Bethlehem, but he understood the importance of keeping family and politics apart. We spent most of the day exploring the water system. This is significant in the digging of Hezekiah's tunnel (2 Chron. 32) and the Pool of Siloam (John 9) to which the tunnel directed its water. Hezekiah built this tunnel in order to conceal the source of his water supply from the Assyrian invaders in the 7th c. BCE.

God bless all of you. I don't have much philosophizing in me today except to tell you that I am happy without deserving to be so. That's the best happiness we can get, being happy in spite of misfortune. I found a kipa (yarmulka) for 10 shekels! And I look darn good in it.