Mountain and Sea

The past couple of days continued to be quite full and fast paced. We are enjoying everything we see and do. The picture below was taken in the beautiful gardens of the church at the Mountain of the Beatitudes. We began our day with Mass there after hearing some historical context from our guide. In fact we are learning so much from our two guides - Rami gives us the historical and social context of life in Jesus' time and Robert gives us the biblical context - a perfect match!
Apparently the shape of the mount which is semi circular has very good acoustics which means that if Jesus were preached on the shoreline people further up on the hill would have been able to hear him very clearly.
Bon and Michael, this photo is for you!!



The Dead Sea was a very pleasant surprise for me and Leonie as we expected the water to be a dull grey colour. Instead as we came along the highway and started the descent we saw the sea in every shade of blue and torquoise set against a background of light brown, rocky mountains. The contrast was striking and for something that was supposedly "dead" there seemed to be a lot of life and energy there. It was obvious that the sea is depleting as the tide lines were marked in the 1990s at around minus 400m below sea level while now it measures 1000m below!
The mud found at the Dead Sea is allegedly very beautifying so several members applied the black mud to their skin and floated happily in the water.
The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is very long winding and would have taken anyone a long time to travel so we wondered if Jesus took about 3 years to get from one end to the other??





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Hope

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