Is This the City?

Is This the City?
Psalm 48

When my first wife and I moved to the United States, people would ask what I would miss about England, to which I would answer not fish and chips or even Indian food but proximity to France and to Israel. Since the move I haven’t been to Israel, partly because it’s a long way, partly because Ann’s being in a wheelchair made it too complicated, but also partly because the political situation (especially the building of the wall separating Palestinian areas from Jewish areas) made the situation there so grievous that I didn’t want to face it. But my new wife and I have been discussing the possibility of spending some time in Jerusalem next year. It seems time to face facts. More important, being in Jerusalem brings home the having-happenedness of Jewish and Christian faith. That faith is not a collection of theological ideas or behavioral principles but the story of something that happened in a particular location at a particular time...