I just returned from ten amazing days in the Holy Land. What an incredible blessing to walk in the places where Jesus Himself walked and pray in the places where He and his apostles prayed and kneel at the site where Redemption was won for the entire world. It certainly makes the mysteries of our faith such as the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection come to life in a whole new way! I’m overwhelmed with gratitude when I reflect upon all that I was blessed to experience. A verse from the Gospel of Matthew has continued to resonate in the few weeks I’ve been back. “Many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it and hear what you hear but did not hear it” (Matthew 13:17). My life will never be the same because of all that I was blessed to see, hear, and experience in those ten days.
I was struck by so many things during my time in Israel that I think it’s going to take my whole life to contemplate and process all that I saw and experienced, but one of the very first things that struck me most was the ordinary-ness of the region of Galilee. During the first half of our trip we stayed in Tiberias, literally right on western shore of the Sea of Galilee. As I gazed across the sea in the days we were there, I was so struck by the fact that God entered human time and history in a very real, very tangible, very ordinary place. There’s really nothing too astounding about the region of Galilee in Israel. The Sea is certainly beautiful and surrounded by very unique desert-like mountains, but it is a very real place. Standing there, I could just see Peter and the other apostles going about their daily work. Seeing the physical places where Jesus worked miracles and called his disciples to follow him caused me to imagine what that would have been like for them. What was it about Jesus that drew them to him? What caused them to abandon all else to follow him? How was it that he rocked their world? Did they recognize that something was different about him? Did they know that God was walking in their midst?
There’s something so beautiful about this reality that God chose to enter time and history in a very simple, ordinary place. It certainly shows the humility of our God and the simplicity with which he comes. But it doesn’t stop there. It points to the intimacy of the relationship he desires to have with each one of us. Just as God touched down to human history in the womb of a virgin in a little place called Nazareth in the region of Galilee, so too does he desire to touch down into our lives in the ordinary circumstances we find ourselves in day after day. He wants to break into human history each and every day by breaking into our hearts, by breaking into our lives. And He often does so in very real, very ordinary ways. I’m sure that there were many people living in Galilee at the time who did not let Jesus affect their lives, many who were either too busy to notice, or too cautious to care. And some who simply did not recognize that God was walking in their midst. How often do we fail to recognize the very simple, very ordinary ways that God comes to us, that he touches down to earth, hoping to break into our lives and into our hearts? Let us not be like those who failed to notice, but rather let us be like the apostles whose lives became radically different when God broke into their lives, who in the midst of their ordinary lives were so drawn to him and to his presence in their midst that they abandoned all to follow him!
By Sarah Houde
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