“Hiking through the beautiful Galilean countryside, we stopped to pick flowers and sing. Everything is slower here. People notice things. We all gathered on a hill by the Sea of Galilee and sat together under a crooked tree. Everyone took turns saying a piece of Christ’s incredible sermon on the mount. Now it makes so much sense to read phrases like “birds of the air” or “lilies of the field” - Jesus would have been surrounded by those things when he taught that sermon. I was surrounded by them. He taught some of the most powerful lessons of Christianity using metaphors that simple people could understand - things like trees and salt and houses built on rock. It’s so easy to picture him now. Being here at the place of so many miracles (walking on water, calming the storm, casting nets on the other side) actually opens my eyes to Jesus’ humanity. Being here helps me picture him skipping rocks with his disciples or eating apples under a crooked tree or watching the sun set behind a hillside like this one. He is as alive today as he was then. And I’m more in love with him than ever.”