Saturday Sabbaths

     One of the most interesting things I have found here in the Holy Land is that we have the Sabbath on Saturday. I am so used to going to church on Sunday that having a backwards weekend has been a slight adjustment.  It's weird that I can now go shopping on a Sunday and feel no guilt about it.
    But anyways, Sabbaths here are so amazing.  On Friday night we went to the Western Wall to celebrate the beginning of the Sabbath.  And let me tell you, we did celebrate.  I'm so used to church being a solemn affair where we try to stay more quiet and feel the Spirit.  So, it was a shock how loud it was at the Wall.  They were truly celebrating.  When we first got there and went through security all you could see was the top section of the wall and masses of people.  A bunch of us decided to brave the masses and oushed our way through the crowd to try and reach the wall. 
   It was a bit of a struggle, but eventually we made it up to the wall and were able to join many in putting a prayer in the wall.  Then as we backed out we were pulled into one of the many circles of singing and dancing.  Of course we didn't really know any of the words to the songs, but the dancing was easy to catch onto (a lot of it was simple clapping or spinning in a circle).  Adn we had a woman to translate the words of the songs to us.  I really can't describe it well enough, but I felt like it was just one big party.  And I realized that's more of the attitude I should have towards our Sabbath.  So many times I have been less than enthusiastic about going to church and listening to talks and classes for three hours.  However, the joy that these Jews had for their Sabbath was contagious and really inspired me to try and be a lot better about celebrating the Sabbath.
  Then today after church our group of 80 students all walked through Jerusalem to the Garden Tomb which is one of the most amazing places I have ever been.  It's right off of a busy road, but it's so quiet in the garden.  Many groups go through at one time to see the places that may have been Golgotha and the Garden Tomb.  I liked what our tour guide said: that even though that may have been the area of the actualy tomb where Jesus was buried, it doesn't matter because we don't worship the rocks or the hill, we worship the Christ. 
   There were lots of different groups there as we went through the gardens and we got to hear all the different languages they were speaking and hear the different songs and types of worship.  I thought it was really neat that despite all of our differences we all came to the tomb to celebrate the same thing, it's one places where different Christians come from all across the world to worship together.