from hell to resurrection in 5 minutes

Today was a great day. We spent the morning walking around the Old City of Jerusalem. As we walked out of the school, we looked over the Hinnom Valley. This is where child sacrifice occurred, and where the city dump was started. During Jesus' time, it was a place that was constantly on fire from the trash that was being burned, so it was an ample picture of death and agony. When he spoke of Gehenna, people knew what he was referring to. It was a powerful moment to look out over the valley and to be struck with the force of Jesus' statements when I could see where and what he was talking about. After our morning devotion, where Jan spoke about Jerusalem only being a tourist place without Jesus' death and resurrection, it was fitting to begin with the idea that we needed to pray and weep over the city as Jesus did.
We started at the Zion Gate and made our way in a sort of clockwise fashion around the city. I had gotten lost around there last night with Josh, so it was funny to start where the evening ended. We went through the Armenian quarter into the Christian quarter. There we spent a little time at a church that has a number of names - Anastasia, Resurrection, Holy Sepulchre. It is most commonly called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre today, but was known as the church of the resurrection for many years. It was built in the 4th century by Helena, Constantine's mother, when she researched and found the likely place. Time has changed the idea, but it was only through bad research. The Church of the Resurrection was stunning and caused me to wrestle with the dichotomy of worship and excess. I think it is a beautiful expression of worship to build a building like that, but at the same time it appears to be so much excess. what good the money could have done. But, I know that Jesus accepted gifts that were expensive and seemed over the top.