Nine years ago, Lynn and I had the opportunity to go to Israel.  I can still picture many of the scenes in my mind — Palm Sunday in Jerusalem, possible sites of the place where Jesus hung on a cross and the tomb in which resurrection took place, walking along the Sea of Galilee, sitting on the hillside where Jesus may have given his Sermon on the Mount, floating in the dead sea, singing at a church near the pool of Bethesda, and the list goes on and on.

Many of them caught my heart, many of them were just interesting, but the site that surprised Lynn and I both with emotion was the Church of the Nativity.  This small church outside Bethlehem marks the assumed birthplace of Jesus.  Near the back of the church you will find an altar, behind the altar you will find a cave.  Near the back of the cave, if you get on your hands and knees you can touch to touch a star enlaid in the floor marking the place of Christ’s birth…

I don’t know — when I touched the star — I just had this sense of entering the story and coming into God’s presence.  But here’s the deal, you can’t come into God’s presence standing.  You’ll bump your head.  And you don’t find your way into the story unless you get on your knees.  We don’t get to know God without prayer and we don’t really dive deep into prayer without humble dependence.

We talked about that some last week at Calvary — James 2:1-5  “The Untraveled Path to God.”  Click

if you would like to listen online.