I don't have a bucket list ya'll, just a bucket place and that is Israel. I have said for years if I could just put my hand where Jesus put His hand, I wouldn't want to go anywhere else. So when the opportunity arose, I was beside myself envisioning all that I might see, feel, touch and know about my Jesus, up close and real. I poured through the gospels in preparation, packed all our necessities and prayed to know Him closer through the journey. The main place I wanted to see... The Wailing Wall. I knew which day we would visit and carefully prepared myself to walk up alone to encounter my Jesus, hand to hand.
Turns out, The Wailing Wall is more appropriately called the Western Wall due to it's proximity to the Temple Mount. Turns out, this is not a Holy and Sacred place for Christians, but is for Jews who come here to mourn the destruction of their two temples that formally stood on that temple mount. Turns out that upon approaching The Wall all the prayers written and tucked inside every crack in this wall, so many that the floor is littered with folded up prayers is what catches my eye, my attention. Turns out that the place I had planned to encounter my Jesus the closest, is a place He was going to teach me about being close.
I have spent so much of my life deciding how I am going to encounter Jesus. At The Western Wall He reminded me that He goes with me, to the ends of the earth and is closer to me in the quiet of the morning at my own kitchen table, in the bathroom stall at work, and in my car worshiping with abandon then He is at some location I've pre-determined. Those folded up prayers rushed a thanksgiving over me like I haven't felt in a good long while. Those faces and bodies squished up against that wall, trying to get as close as they could to God hit such a chord of rejoicing I can't put into words. Touching that wall, praising my Jesus for His work on that cross so I could know and find Him closely, anywhere, tears of a different kind flowed, bouncing off those folder papers and splashing on that sacred ground.
Truth is girls, His Holy Ground is where ever we honor Him, put Him first, seek His presence and decide to run after Him. While my journey to Israel was more than I could have imagined, filled me with such knowledge about Jesus's time on this earth and allowed me a window into life in modern Israel, the most precious part came when I returned to my kitchen table, just me and my Jesus unpacking it all.
Praise to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost for the plan to be close, no matter what it took.
