Galilee Day #1 - Nazareth

So last night I only got four hours of sleep because after getting back late from Tel Aviv I still had to pack and write a paper. We left early this morning for the Galilee. I am definitely a lot happier with life when I get a descent amount of sleep. We are going to be in Galilee for a week and a half. It is going to be really spiritual to study the life of Jesus where he actually lived. 

On the way to the Galilee we stopped at Beth Shean which is the city where the Philistines hung the bodies of Saul and his sons on the city wall (2 Samuel 1). That is sort of a graphic scriptural reference, but it teaches that even if you were once blessed like Saul was that does not mean that future wickedness with he tolerated by the Lord.

We spent a few hours in Nazareth. This is where both Mary and Joseph received angelic messages (annunciations) about the divine birth of Jesus. Both Mary and Joseph have a church dedicated to them in memory of those revelations. My favorite part of Nazareth was the synagogue church which is a church built where the synagogue of Jesus' time is believed to have been. The place was even more significant to me because there is actually some archaeological  evidence that the first century synagogue was really there. This is the location where Christ declared himself to be the Messiah by reading Isaiah 61. 

Funny thing that happen today was our third third site was suppose to be an outlook of the Sea of Galilee and the surrounding area. We went up to the top of the mount which would usually provide a nice view because of the height; however, the weather today is overcast and foggy so we couldn't see anything. I guess it was okay because it was beautiful place where we could read about the Savior's Galilean Ministry.