Limestone and Lava

You have to be in a place to really know it—to internalize it. And when you do, you make some amazing discoveries that change the way you perceive everything from that point forward. I had never been to Galilee, the home ground of Yeshua before this trip, so I was looking forward to going there and seeing it for myself.

The first stop was Nazareth, the hometown of the young Yeshua. It is now a major center in Northern Israel, bustling and interesting. Of course there are the requisite churches over historical sites. But most interesting for me were the elevations of the town itself—the sweep and slopes of the mountainous territory of Nazareth and the limestone caves archaeologists had uncovered from Yeshua’s time that held livestock and granaries. There were the hills and valleys that Yeshua walked, and the direction of the nearest Greek town to which he and his father must have walked perhaps on a daily basis to work. I felt it all in my bones—these beautiful green, rocky, limestone hills and valleys of Galilee. And off in the distance, Mount Tabor, that alone rounded mountain where the Transfiguration (the Metamorphosis) had occurred.

Then our bus wound down, down, making our way through mountains and valleys to the shores of the “Sea” of Galilee—a sizeable and beautiful lake nestled low in these mountains. It would have taken hours and perhaps days of walking from Nazareth to get there.

We drove to an excavated site archaeologists have uncovered in old Capernaum (Kafar Nahum—the Village of Nahum) where Yeshua had made his headquarters in that fishing village by the lake during the time of his active ministry. It was there in that village that archaeologist had discovered the “household of Peter.” What you now see is an excavation of a large family compound that is believed to be where Peter and his extended family had lived and where Yeshua perhaps took a room, and from which he taught and worked. And very nearby the foundations of an old synagogue where he prayed.

And most surprising for me (a small detail perhaps) it was all made of black basalt (lava rock) that spills out over the region from the Golan Heights in Syria nearby from an ancient volcanic overflow that becomes the basin for the Lake, and creating the volcanic mountains all around—the same mountains into which he went to pray, and from which he taught his famous Sermon full of revolutionary insights about religion, spirituality, and God.

I just never knew—these black stones held him and the beautiful lake and the dark mountains that spoke to him. He loved it all, giving himself away there, traveling for days walking, teaching, touching people everywhere with such profound power. I was deeply moved.