I first had the opportunity to visit the Holy Land in 2009 as part of my graduate studies. It was a glorious, three-week, life-changing adventure. The trip was a study tour that focused on historical geography, biblical history, and archaeology. But for me it was also a Christian pilgrimage. Walking the land where so much of the biblical story unfolded helped to connect me to that story and to understand it with new depth. That story is, after all, our faith heritage as Christians.
In my case, it isn’t that there is a “magic” about the place that somehow charmed me in a fairy-tale sense. The land did, however, give me perspective from which I could read, hear, and experience God’s story like never before, and this has been faith-building for me. I read, study, think, teach, and even worship differently because I have been in the land and can reference those experiences to inform today’s. Standing on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, or at the foot of Mt. Hermon in Caesarea Philippi, or in the Elah Valley where David slew Goliath adds a sense of place and scale to a story that is deeply rooted in the local geography.
One of the biggest changes to my perspective that came with my first visit was understanding how compact the Holy Land is. Places are much closer together than I imagined (even with a map), but the terrain itself can separate them in ways that modern travelers cannot appreciate well. Great differences in topography exist across short distances, and with those distances come differences in how people lived and moved around. Also, as in other places, the ability to survive depended on water, and one understands how this worked in that place by traversing the various landscapes and observing their hydrological and related geological features.
The real people and real places of the Bible don’t remain flat on the page after walking the stony Jericho Road, seeing the color of the sunrise from the Sea of Galilee as a new day peeks over the highlands of the Golan, and listening to the waters of En Gedi flow as David must have heard them while hiding from Saul. When the Song of Songs in the Old Testament likens someone to Mount Carmel (7;5), or Jesus points to “‘this mountain” as he teaches about having faith as small as a mustard seed (Matthew 17:20), or we read about the Temple courts in Acts, these places have meaning for me. They connect me even more deeply to the faith story in which they play such an important part.
This is the faith connection that has transformed me the most. It’s the growing of my biblical faith into the real, three-dimensional world that God created, that Jesus came to save, and that the Spirit sustains daily—a reality that we understand through a history that unfolded in the same real, three-dimensional world.
It is special by itself, of course, to climb the southern steps of the Temple Mount where Jesus actually walked, or to visit the Pool of Siloam or the Garden of Gethsemane where important events in Jesus’ life and ministry happened. It is powerful to pray at the Western Wall and to worship with others on a boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee. It is spiritually nourishing for me and many others simply to be there. But it goes so much further than that in the way that it contributes to how I now read the Bible, which in turn is faith-shaping in my life.
I’m hooked. I learn more and go deeper in my knowledge and experience of the Bible’s story, and in my Christian faith, each time I visit the Holy Land. I can’t wait to return and to share this with others who are on the journey of faith, too.
