The Scent of Spices Still Lingers

When I was 20 years old, I moved to Israel for one year and worked in a youth hostel that was run by an American mission. It was a year filled with scents and sounds and images that still dance across my dreams, now 21 years later. The first time I stepped off of a bus in Jerusalem, I had the strangest sense that I had come home. Everything around me seemed vaguely familiar. Perhaps it was the bible stories that had been told to me in Sunday School. Remember those little paper figures and scenes that stuck to the flannelcloth board? Or maybe it was because my Lord walked the dusty roads here and as His child, I sensed His physical presence. Whatever it was, it washed over me and filled me up inside with warm feelings of familiarity and tender love. I lived for a while, in the shadow of the Damascus Gate. I awoke very early each morning and surged through the gate in a tide of donkeys and sandal clad men and veiled women. The call to prayer from the minerets echoed through the streets and stirred my senses in haunting ways. The smell of spices and hanging chickens and hot baked bagels wafted through the air as if on magic carpets, swirling around my head making me dizzy with their aromas. As I walked down the Via Del a Rosa, I dragged my hand along the stone walls and wondered if my Lord's hand ever touched in the exact same spot. It was a holy time for me. A connection to Christ that is hard to explain unless you have been there and walked the streets of old Jerusalem. I also lived up North in the city of Haifa. I traveled to Nazareth and closed my eyes for a moment as I entered the city and wondered what it looked like when Jesus was a boy. I dipped my toe in the Sea of Galilee and squinted into the horizon and tried to glimpse Jesus walking on the water. I was baptized in the Jordan River. Jesus was there. I scooped a handful of water at the pool of Bethesda and prayed for healing and wondered if Christ would have noticed me if I had been there that day He gave sight to the blind man. It's strange, but hardly a day goes by, now so many years later, that I don't have a moment where I am transported back to that amazing place, in that incredible time. I am so grateful that God allowed me to have that experience. As I crawl under my quilt tonight, I will remember that my life was not always sad. I had days of laughter, many of them, and beautiful, blessed experiences. I walked where Jesus walked. I dipped my hot feet into the same cool, refreshing places that He did. Thank you Jesus. For you saw into my future and knew that there would come a night like tonight, when I would need to look backwards for a moment and smile and remember and breath deeply and smell the spices of my life.