Imagine the surprise: You sign up to take a trip with another couple, good friends, and know you have signed up on what is termed “a pilgrimage.” But then you receive a printed book with daily reflection questions, passages of scripture to read, and daily readings. You realize the leader indeed views this journey as a life-changing pilgrimage, just as advertised, not just a visit to Israel.
Every day begins the same - early morning quiet reflection times over the passages, readings and opportunities to journal about life, experiences and insights. Every day you hear detailed lectures as you visit the places you had read about that morning in the Bible. Life Changing is too small a term.
Dave and Sally Sullivan went on such a pilgrimage to Israel last October and came home deeply impacted. The Sunday they returned, October 27th, they said how much they would consider it a privilege to share some of their insights. Since then, I’ve been on them to select a day. So, this Sunday, 2/23, is the time they will share. They have each selected a few of the most impactful moments. We will see slides and videos of some of those as they share. It will be an opportunity to dip into their own experience with Jesus.
The couple, their friends, who went with them were also deeply impacted. The man felt he had gone nearly as an agnostic but returned a man who had encountered and placed faith in Jesus.
At the end of the trip their leader asked three questions/requests.
What’s one thing you brought with you to Israel, that you are leaving behind? (Many named spiritual, psychological or physical burdens which had been loosened/healed and allowed to roll away from them.)
Name something God has done in you as you leave, something God has blessed you with.
Did God get from you what He brought you here for?
If you have never been to Israel, or might never make it, this is a Sunday to visit there by proxy. Come hear their story, come experience the grace of God in story and Scripture and be reminded that all we read of in Scripture is history, the real story of God given to us.
It is remarkable what God wants to do in our lives and hearts, and amazing to give him the chance to do it. This is a week to say: “Come -- have at me God.”
On this last Sunday prior to Lent, come let God have at you. Come hear and experience and enter the story told and experienced by Dave and Sally, and how Jesus walked, and swam, and journeyed with them just as He journeys with you day by day.