Flourishing Life

Joseph the Builder

I slept in the latest I’ve slept on this trip, 7:00 a.m. I woke up earlier, didn’t get up and fell back to sleep. It was nice. A group of students from a Mennonite college left the inn this morning to hike part of the Jesus Trail. They were up and at ’em, eating breakfast, packing and getting ready to go. I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast with strange coffee, caught up with the news, went out for a walk through the market and ended up down on the main street. I met Bob at McDonald’s (again) and ate a “Big America” burger.

We walked back up the hill, past the Church of the Annunciation, and met our guide for the first day of the Jesus Trail along with a German couple who will be joining us, for an introduction to hiking the trail. She shared quite a bit of useful information, I took voluminous notes and in general feel good about tomorrow. One of the reasons they give us a guide for the first day is the trail out of Nazareth is difficult to follow. We learned about a good store to stock up on lunch items while on the trail. Breakfast and supper is provided at each of the hotels in which we will be staying along the trail.

Man, Donkey, & Donkey, Jr.

A little later in the afternoon we headed out to an attraction called the Nazareth Village, a recreation of 1st century Nazareth operated by an institution founded by the Edinburgh Medical Mission Society in 1906. The fifteen-minute walk turned into a thirty-minute search. We were instructed to follow purple blazes through and then out of the Old City and part of the modern town to Nazareth Village. At one point we saw a marker with an arrow over it, pointing into the gate of a Muslim Cemetery. We weren’t sure we should go through, explored around briefly and finally traversed the cemetery. When we arrived at the far gate we saw no markers. So, we turned around, figuring we had gone the wrong way. To make a long story short, we were on the right path but it took several more trips through and around the cemetery to discern the correct heading and arrive safely at Nazareth Village. We decided it would be a good thing to follow a guide on the first day of the Jesus Trail.

The Rabbi in the Small Synagogue

The Nazareth Village displays the remains of a first century farm and several structures to recreate the look and feel of village life in the time of Jesus. A Nazareth Village guide told the story of Jesus in a compelling and approachable manner, as many of the visitors are non-Christians. A highlight for me was the replica of an early small synagogue, the kind that might have existed here in Jesus’ day.

We made it back to the Inn and kicked around a bit, then headed out to find the “supermarket.” After another significant “detour” we found one. It was a decent-sized grocery store, but we walked right past it the first time, thinking it was a small market. We picked up our lunch supplies for the next several days and then stopped off at a nice restaurant for supper.

We came back to the Inn and packed up most of our stuff and are just about ready for the big day tomorrow, Day 1 on the Jesus Trail.