Galilee

Today we walked in Jesus footsteps literally, as we strive to do every day, figuratively. 

We are driving around the Sea of Galilee, armed with a map that a tourist info attendant madly circled things on… points of interest, places to sleep? And we’re not quite sure what else.  We spent the night in Tiberius, a city steeped with Jewish history and dating back to Jesus time.  Here are graves of many important Sanhedrin, but we didn’t visit them.  Tiberius today is kind of like the Rockford, IL of Israel.  No one is very happy to be there, and the only thing it has going for it is the history and the beach front. 

We drove from Tiberius to the Mount of the Beatitudes where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount.  There is a beautiful church erected there by the Italian Catholic Church, and lovely gardens and walkways overlooking the Sea of Galilee.  It was beautiful, and moving in it’s silent spiritual splendor.

From the Mount we proceeded on to Tagbah, the location of the feeding of the five thousand (According to two of the gospels and numerous historians).  Again, a beautiful church has been erected over the sight, with the alter being the rock that Jesus is supposed to have been sitting on that day while teaching.  From Tagba we went on to St .Peter’s Church, located on the site where Jesus was supposed to have made his third post crucifixion appearance.  (This is where he appeared to Simon Peter and Andrew who were fishing and told them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat than they had been, after which they caught over a hundred fish and then realized it was Jesus).  Again, a lovely church right on the beach, with beautiful gardens you can walk and pray in.  From here we moved on to Capernaum,” Jesus’s Town” as the welcome sign proudly proclaimed.  Here there are ruins from Peter’s home, and ruins of other parts of the city of Capernaum.  There is part of an old temple which Jesus used to teach in quite often, which upon closer inspection of the outer wall revealed hundreds of notes from visitors tucked in to the cracks- prayers for their families, supplications to God.  We had no paper handy with which to participate, but it was cool just to see.

After Capernaum we continued to head North, stopping to look at the Jordan River as we crossed it.  We branched away from the coast to head into Golan to find lodging for the night.