Holy:
Dedicated or consecrated to God or religious purpose
The Holy Land:
A region on the eastern shore of the Mediteranean Sea, in what is now
Israel and Palestine
Holy Week: The week leading up to and including Easter, starting with Palm Sunday
It is the name often used when talking about the area that I
call home this year. “The Holy
Land.” Every year millions of pilgrims here from all over the world to visit
the holy sites. They visit the
churches that commemorate the Bible stories that many of us grew up hearing. They visit the place where Jesus was
born, where Jesus grew up, where Jesus performed his miracles, where Jesus was
crucified and where Jesus rose again.
After their time here, many walk away feeling recharged, closer to God
and having encountered a new sense of holy.
Yet, after 7 months of living in the so-called “Holy
Land,” I still have yet to feel
connected to the holy in the ways that many of these pilgrims seem to connect
after only a few days. I have
visited many of the same holy sites, and run past some of them on a daily
basis, but I have also seen the things that most of the pilgrims never see. Many
of these pilgrims will come in on tour buses, visit the sites and return to
their hotels without encountering the people who call this place home or hearing
their stories. On their tour bus,
they are allowed to pass through checkpoints as if they were nothing more than
a toll booth, not even aware that they are now in Palestine, remaining
blissfully unaware of the occupation.
Seven months of living with, and hearing the stories of, the daily realities of the occupation,
of being surrounded by a “security wall”, going through checkpoints and
witnessing the daily effects of prejudice and hatred, have left me wondering where
the holy exists in the pain and brokenness of this land.
As I joined several thousand of these pilgrims on Sunday for
the Palm Sunday procession into Jerusalem to mark the beginning of Holy Week, I
found myself wondering about what it is that makes things “holy.”
I have spent a fair amount of time this year struggling with
this. Is this the only holy land on the planet? What is it that makes this land
more holy than the cornfields I grew up in? Is this the only holy week during
the year? What makes this week
before Easter any more holy than the other 51 weeks of the year?
Then on Sunday my cousin posted this song by Peter Mayer titled Holy Now
Even though I don’t encounter with the holy
that most pilgrims do when they visit the Holy Sites, through my encounters
with the pain and the brokenness, I get to encounter the holy in this land that
most pilgrims never will. I meet
the holy in the Christians who are “living stones,” the keepers of a rich
history and traditions for who the holy sites are more than markers of history
but are their current places of worship. I encounter the holy when I here the
stories of families who remain here and remain hopeful despite the challenges
they have encountered. I see the
continuing work of the holy as part of the “original” Christian community that has been around since
Christ. I get a glimpse of the holy each day in the faces of my Kindergarten
students. I am surrounded by the
holy each time I am remind of the family I have become a part of here. I feel the holy as I bask
in the sunshine and beautiful flowers of the spring. In the words of Carrie Newcomer in her song I Believe, “All I know is I can’t help
but see all of this as so very holy”
During this Holy Week, may we each be reminded that we are
surrounded by the holy, every day of every week in every land, if we open our
eyes to it we may just find ourselves overwhelmed by it.
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