Soldiers at the Wailing Wall

We came to Israel expecting to touch the roots of our faith tradition—and we did, but in ways that took us all by surprise. I left that land knowing firsthand what life under Roman occupation must have been like, what it must have felt like. The names and uniforms have changed. There are strange role reversals now, but Israel is still occupied territory where fear and suspicion lurk across the population and peoples, and only a tight military hand keeps the lid on this boiling pot. So it was in Yeshua’s day.

“So this is what it felt like then,” I said to myself over and over again. A troubled peace with soldiers on every corner, and yet underneath it all, the hopes and dreams of its people, the religious and spiritual longing, and the displays of a fierce piety from each Abrahamic tradition remain—all concentrated on this one tiny place, magnified and intensified. And so the pressure builds.

The power of these tensions became completely apparent to me at the Wailing Wall. People of every persuasion (Jews in particular) were gathered there, faces pressed against the Wall praying, crying out, suffering. Soldiers and civilians alike, orthodox and secular, Israelis and tourists, Jews and Christians stood faces pressed against the hard surface praying. And just above us, over the top, on the Temple Mount itself, Muslims kneeling with their faces pressed against the same stone, praying.

We were all concentrated there together—the stones literally holding the intent and the vibration of our prayers—some written on torn scraps of paper and crammed into the crevices between the stones of the ancient foundation of the Temple Mount. We, the Abrahamic people, suffer. We wail against the hard barriers of history and our present condition, pleading for release.