Firstly, I must apologise in advance.  This blog entry has been written at 10am Israeli time, I have had only 20 minutes sleep in the past 24 hours and I have spent the past 12 hours getting here - of which 5 hours were spent waiting around in airports - so I may not be as coherent as I'd wish to be!  But enough of that - the good news is that I, and the rest of the group from theological colleges across the UK (there are around 35 of us), have arrived safely.  We're staying in Tantur Ecumenical Institute.



We're here as a group primarily to go on a journey of discovery, to walk where Jesus walked, and to hopefully bring the Gospels more alive in the process.  This is what the Tantur website says about the experience:

What characterizes this program is the context of the Holy Land—"the fifth gospel". To read the story of Jesus and the first Christians in the context of this "fifth" gospel shapes not only our understanding of the Scriptures, but also of how our Christian faith is embodied in concrete, complex reality. While we do many guided excursions to the land (among them a five-day trip to Galilee), we focus not only the stones of archeological remains, but also study the "living stones"—the local Eastern and Western churches in their difficult situation as minorities who share land and life with Jews and Muslims.

For me, this trip fulfils a lifelong dream that I've had.  I want to learn, to be challenged and for my faith to become that bit more alive in the process.  I hope that I'll come away better equipped to bring the gospel to my own context back in England; to relate better to those of other faiths and none. I want to see what it is about this place that has made it the centre of conflict between three world religions, why it deserves the title of the Holy Land and why war still continues unabated in this region.  Sadly, the huge wall that was built through the West Bank to separate the Israelis and the Palestinians can be seen from the grounds of Tantur.  It's a real scar on the landscape.



The facilities here are excellent, so I'll hopefully be able to share my reflections with you as our time here progresses.  In the mean time, please pray - firstly for us as a
group, that we get on well together, that we are kept safe in what is after all a volatile place, and that we come away that little bit more in awe of and in love with Jesus.  Pray also for the people we've left behind for these three weeks (for many of us this will have been the longest time that we've been apart from our spouses).  Their sacrifice is so much greater than ours.