Jerusalem: Sorrow and Beauty
I recently spent a few weeks in Jerusalem. The sidewalk we walked on predated our home country and the church we stayed at in the old city was founded long before our great grandparents were a thought. Each stone held more stories than Aesop’s own fairy book. Blood, sweat, tears and plenty of dirty sandals. I had just bought my first pair of Birkenstocks and the first ground they touched was these huge stones(if you don’t count Nashville International and Dubai International Airports).
But if you have ever stepped into a city as old as Jerusalem(good luck its one of the oldest cities in the world being around 5000 years old), you feel the history, the depth, the sorrow that is only present in a place that has experienced it all. Numerous Crusades, Military plights, hostile takeovers, pillagings and complete levelings. There is a spiritual weight that if not kept in check would drown you in the sorrow of a desperate people.
It just so happened that the first weekend we were there happened to be the 9th of Avv, a holiday commemorating the destruction of both Solomon’s temple and the second temple in AD 70(also happens to be the day World War 1 started). Our small group of 7, approached the western wall of the temple mount to see a plethora of Jewish pilgrims approaching and praying at the wall. We were in the midst of a people in pure desperation approached the wall thinking that by coming here it was as close they could get to experiencing the nearness of God. Yet there were these seven individuals in their midst that housed the spirit of God. That they could experience this nearness by looking to them and the fact that God is right there. But they are left with a great sorrow, that they could never reach what they wanted. A sorrow that leaves you feeling the same compassion Jesus had when he looked upon the crowd.
It extends even more as you see how people respond to what was happening in their own country, not even 12 kilometers away. We met an Armenian man whose wife’s aunts were some of the Christians stuck in Gaza and facing starvation. The stories of children unable to sleep in their own beds because of their fear that the missile sirens would go off. Of Orphans and refugees only accepted into Christian Hospitals because they were either Jewish or Arab. Families whose sons and daughters died in a war they were sent to fight by people in a high tower far away. I find it so easy in places and times like these to get lost in the torment of it all, that you just want to curl up and cry.
But in the same place there is so much beauty. In the same place God overwhelms you with a small glimpse of his presence, some cracks in the fabric of reality where rays of heaven shine down. Watching one of our team members play little hand with some kids. The gospel presented through the colors of the rainbow displayed together in a tapestry. Hours of prayer and worship in communion and intercession with one another for the land and the people that dwell in it. An empty tomb in a garden where ten years ago, my friends and I lamented and declared gratitude for his faithfulness, and now we sing his victory over the grave. We took part in Mikvahs in the Jordan sharing God’s faithfulness and this new season that he is bringing us into. An unearthed first century Synagogue in Magdala, where Jesus had once walked and taught. Even now, I think of these moments of grace bestowed upon us and I am left undone.
It’s sometimes hard to see that beauty, especially since coming back to the states, but it’s still there. We just have to orient our lives to see it. One Shabbat dinner, we sat around a large table with an abundance of food and conversation, wine and laughter. Free time and priceless conversations, Book readings and cups of tea. In those hours of communion, beauty was still accessible, far away from the things that distract us from looking up.
In the western church, we have gotten so caught up in logic and sound arguments that we forgot the gift God has given us to witness his beauty in his handiwork. The beauty of every soul that he has uniquely made. Beauty in the here and now, the moment. Beauty in the true and powerful work of the cross. Beauty doesn’t cause the things that don’t matter to not matter but instead causes those that do to shine brighter than everything else.
