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During the summer of 2000, I had the opportunity to travel with Calvary Community Church to Israel. It was a magical trip for many reasons. I proposed to my wife, Jenny, in Haifa along the Mediterranean Sea. (She said “yes”!)

The stories I grew up reading in black and white turned into full color. If you’ve ever been to Times Square in New York, visited the Colosseum in Rome, or looked up at Half Dome in Yosemite in person, there is a sense of awe. Or, like the feeling I had when each of my daughters, Kaley, Ally, and Mary were born, I knew something incredible and important in my life just took place. Take all those kinds of feelings and magnify them by a scale factor, and you’ll start to comprehend the essence of what it’s like to be in Jerusalem. It was incredible to be where Jesus lived and walked. 

On one of the days of the trip, we visited Caesarea Philippi. There was a lush garden of trees with a freshwater stream near Mount Hermon. The backdrop was a tall, majestic rock formation that looked somewhat out of place. It was all very beautiful. In this passage of Scripture, Jesus takes His disciples to this area and asks them what others say about who He is. They offer the different views people have of who He is. Then Jesus asks them the most important question of all time, “But who do you say that I am?” For each of us, how we answer that question impacts us every day. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  

Final Thought:  Who do you say Jesus is? Every day, we have an opportunity to live out the answer to that question.

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