Photos: Via Dolorosa ("Way of Suffering) - the Stations of the Cross, ending at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer

Good Friday morning I got up at 5:30 to get to the Anglican church again to walk to the Old City, and to the first station of the cross on the Via Dolorosa.  It took us about two hours to visit all 14 “Stations of the Cross,” and we weren't the only group there either!  However, as we went from station to station, read Scripture, sang hymns, prayed, and meditated on what happened to Christ as he walked this road to his death, the stations came alive in real meaningful ways to me.  It moved beyond "ritual" to "worship."  Perhaps part of it has to do with the fact that I've walked this route so many times since I got here, but only to get from place to place, not in a devotional way.  Putting together my familiarity with the locations with the meaning of this Good Friday day helped give the stations this "extra something," and I sensed the agony and again, LOVE, that Jesus felt through these hours of his life.  When we completed this service, I trotted over to the Garden Tomb for their Good Friday service too.  A very small group was in attendance, and I sat in the very first row of seats, with the tomb itself right before me--and it was almost more than I could bear!  The whole service was just the reading of and meditations on the Passion story, ending with Jesus' burial in the tomb.  When we sang "Crown Him with Many Crowns" and "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," my heart just swelled till I thought it would explode!  How could it be that I was the one person in the whole world to be sitting in that seat, directly before the tomb as we remembered Jesus' actual burial there?!