Gallicantu

I couldn't sleep beginning at 1:40 am our first night in Israel, I was so turned around. So I laid in my small arab hotel in my little Dick Van Dyke bed (Craig's term). At 2:30, Craig woke up in his. We tried hard for a long time not to disturb each other, and we stayed awake and still, a faint orange light coming through our curtains a few yards outside the old city wall of Jerusalem. I considered the Dome of the Rock gleaming through our window on the temple mount, Golgatha very nearby to the right, the Mount of Olives to the left. I happily imagined that, unlike the disciples, for one night i could perhaps have watched and waited with the Lord, being so awake! I considered Caiaphas' Palace (the church of Gallicantu)a few hundred yards away, and Jesus' imprisonment there during the longest night in the world, after the last supper, the intercessory prayer, the agony of Gethsemane, the skirmish and the forced walk to the chief priests. I remembered Jacob's night's wrestle with the Lord the same few stones cast from our room on Mt Moriah, and Abraham sleeping or waking the final night of his journey to lay his son on the alter there. I imagined an early light entering an empty tomb a half mile out of view. It was good to be there, awake.