The muddy river and the glistening sea...

Yesterday, we ventured around the land were Jesus lived and spent much of his ministry, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, near the town of Capernaum. We began our day at the Jordan River, the river where John the Baptist preached, and where Jesus was baptized. The river was high due to recent rain, but was not more than 25 feet across. It was also very muddy. There on the shore of the Jordan our group renewed our Baptismal promises, and gathered water from the river that some of us will mix with the water we use at Baptisms in our churches. I also released some of the cremation ashes of a friend of mine into the river, a bitter sweet moment of death being mixed with the waters of Baptism and new life. And again I was reminded what the resurrection life of Jesus we live together in Baptism is all about - it is in places of death that we find new life.

From there, we went on to visit the hills, valley, and the sea where Jesus called and taught his disciples. The land where he worked, and his fame grew. We visited the 1st century town where Jesus lived, Capernaum, after he was driven out of Nazareth. We visited were the synagogue once stood that Jesus taught in, and the house that is believed to be where Peter lived. We stood on a hill where the Sermon on the Mount could have been delivered, and the spot were the loaves and fishes could have been multiplied. We can not be sure if these are the exact locations that these things took place, but we do know that it all happened along this few mile strip next to the Sea of Galilee. It really sunk in for me that Jesus was a real person, who lived in a real place, had a society and a culture that he struggled with, and real friends and companions he worked and ministered with. Jesus' teachings were not just abstractions about life and God, but real teachings, that had to do with the real struggles and experiences of God of his people. Our faith, is about the here and now of our own lives, and meant to be lived out in the real world that we find ourselves in each day.

The mud between my toes in the Jordan River, and the glistening sun of the Sea of Galilee, I found to be a profound reminder that God is so often found in the regular, everyday, things of our lives. Right here, and right now, today.

It is funny that I had to go half way around the world to remember that!