Reading and studying the Bible after visiting the Holy Land is like adding the sets and scenery to a stage production. The story takes on a depth, richness, and context that was not visible before when we experience and understand the land upon which so much of it unfolds.
Travel to the Holy Land offers much to a Christian pilgrim. The experience touches us emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually, as well as in other ways. It leaves us with feelings, impressions, and thoughts. For me as a student and a teacher of the Bible, one of the most prominent and lasting gifts has been the orientation to the Bible’s setting that pilgrimage has equipped me with. Standing in the places, walking the distances, seeing the horizons, learning the travel routes by taking them, and internalizing the perspective provide something to Bible readers that photos, videos, and maps cannot.
This is one of the many things that I value highly about these travels. What may have lived in my mind and in my imagination now lives in my experience. When I read a Bible passage that involves movement, I know the terrain and the distances involved and can bring that into my study and into what I communicate from my study in settings where I teach. When I read a passage that involves weather, farming, or shepherding, the story that unfolds or refers to that land has texture and another dimension that inform its meaning. But perhaps equally if not even more powerful is the sense for the historical that biblical geography brings to Bible study.
For me, the roots of God’s real story in our real world during real time have come alive in ways they never did before. The Christian faith is something that has its roots in what God has done not merely in story, but in history. The unique connection with this great narrative that standing in those places and absorbing, learning, and appreciating their physical features make possible is one of the central reasons that Holy Land pilgrimage is so important to me. I look forward to returning soon and continuing to learn and grow as a Christian believer whose love for God’s story in this world becomes more and more tangible not only as I learn it, but also as I live it.
