The landing gear touches down and I lean toward the small glass windows of our El Al flight, longing to gaze at the strange, new landscape outside. There’s a mood of celebration radiating through the cabin. My first thought–after grateful relief that a long flight is over– is “I am here.”
Months of planning, saving, reading, and praying brought me to this destination. Our tour group deplanes, limbs stretching wearily after a nearly 24-hour trip: a day of buses and jets, of unexpected detours and small miracles. I step into the sunlight and my weariness evaporates as I breathe in the morning air. My heart rejoices with anticipation.
I am here.
I feel as though I’ve returned home, not the return of a traveler to the familiar land of her youth, but the arrival of a sojourner to a place of promise that she’s only visited in her heart. I am Ruth journeying to Bethlehem with Naomi, stepping into my adopted home, the land that adopted me when I proclaimed, “Your God will be my God.” Because my Lord and Savior, Jesus, walked this land; lived, died, and rose again, I am not a stranger here, but a daughter come home.
I am here.
I am a pilgrim in the Promised Land: the land of God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the land to which Moses led the Israelites; the land where God spoke to Samuel and Elijah; the land of Jeremiah’s lament. From their lovely, but lonely, rooms in exile, Esther and Daniel longed to return here. For this land, Nehemiah wept and fasted. To this land God returned the captives and the exiles.
And here I will walk, beneath the same stars that God showed Abraham in the night sky, past the same hills where David tended his sheep, past the same lake where fishermen cast their nets and Jesus called his disciples. Soon, I will walk where Jesus walked and pray where Jesus prayed.
I quiet my heart and listen for His voice calling my name as I answer,
“Yes, Lord, I am here.”
Join the journey in the coming weeks as we travel through the Galilee, walking in the footsteps of Jesus: Tabgha and Capernaum, where Jesus called his disciples; the Mount of Beatitudes; the Sea of Galilee; Yardenit and the Jordan River; Mount Tabor, the site of the Transfiguration; Nazareth and more.
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