Taking a day trip out of Haifa, we first stopped in Nazareth, for the Church of the Anunciation, where the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, and the Church was built won top of the house where Mary lived – “and the Word became flesh”.
Most every nation in the world has donated a portrait of Mary – each is very different, such as this one from Japan.
After Jesus left Nazareth as a grown man, he never came back.
We the travelled through Cana (the site of Jesus’ first miracle of changing water to wine at the wedding – so Muslim Arabs are still selling wine in shops), and went along the Sea of Galilee – first to one of the first Kibbutz and then, after stopping for lunch at a restaurant, by a museum where a 2000 year old fishing boat had been excavated.
The guides all said that this was the much water in the Sea of Galilee that they had ever seen, and were amazed at the whitecaps and waves coming ashore. So instead of us taking a boat out as was on the itinerary (we had little faith that the waters would be calmed), we went on to Capernaum where Jesus lived with Peter and Peter’s family in Peter’s mother-in-law’s House, and Jesus proclaimed Peter as the “rock” upon which his church would be built. The Mount of Beatitudes was also right down the road.
Across the way in the near distance is the Golan Heights; no wonder why Israel has refused to give this back after taking it in the 1967 6-day war.
Statue of Peter by the Church built on top of his mother-inlaw’s house. Jesus later cured her.
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