my birthday!

today i woke up in beit sahour and realized that about 2000 years ago jesus was born within five miles of my house.

i have been trying to understand the significance of this all day - that i am celebrating my birthday in the land of jesus' birth. on this day i have seen bethlehem and jerusalem, where christ was born and where he died.

actually, this is something i have been thinking about throughout the past month or so, it just hit me in a new way today. ~ the importance of the incarnation in my faith. how important it is to me that i could have met God on the road to jerusalem, that he walked in the judean hills, that he knew the burn of muscles from hiking through wadi qelt, the scent of sweat rising from a group of people ... it is hard to explain, maybe, but basically being in this land that for some reason is important in a real, eternal, mysical, crazy way to the story of humanity and God and redemption and love and life - being here is making me love the incarnation. it makes me love that jesus had a body that probably ached at the end of long days (maybe he helped clear fields of rocks like I did at Tent of Nations; maybe he helped his father plant some grape vines like i did that day). i love that jesus lived in a place with thorns (i still have a few thorns in my hands from clearing the field of rocks) and that he didn't shy away from pain. i love that i can envision my savior with the dark hair and expressive eyes of the people who live here; that when i pass an arab man on the street i can think maybe jesus looked like that. i think this is why my faith is secure. because i have found this piece of a crazy, hard, strange religion that i love and that helps me understand the weird parts (like, for example, the old testament stories i blogged about last month).

anyway, today on my birthday, i was thinking about how jesus was born, just like me, and he was born in an actual place. and i am in that actual place. today i saw bethlehem and tonight i walked through jerusalem where he walked and where he died and - ahhhh it is just so, so crazy-good and startling and shocking and i-don't-know-what-to-say-about-it-awesome.

that was my birthday.

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also on my birthday:
-a super huge and delicious breakfast on my last morning in beit sahour
-a happy birthday song on the bus as we left palestine and entered israel
-arriving at Jerusalem University College (JUC)
-exploring jerusalem
-a birthday party after supper which included:
*baklava and a cake-thingy with two candles
*another happy birthday song
*a gift from janet and linford - they have a tradition of giving students with birthdays on their cross-culturals a cross from the place they are in. so i got a cross to put on a necklace that is from jerusalem. :)
-skyping my parents
-gmail-chatting with thia

and now all that is left is getting a really good night's sleep: my birthday was completely awesome and will probably be one of my all-time best, but now i am totally exhausted. :) so, goodnight.