Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee

Strict Jews avoided th4e city of Tiberias because it was built on a graveyard.
But after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D.70 many religious Jews settled there. It was where the Mishna, the oral Jewish tradition was completed about 200AD. It was where vowels were added to the Hebrew text. But to Terry and I it was where we first saw the Sea of Galilee. Our hotel room overlooked the Sea. To wake up in the morning to the sun rising over the place where so many of Jesus's life stories took place. It seemed to us, a place of peace. It was smaller than I had imagined. You could see the other side so easily so that many of the stories made sense. The picture where Terry is standing in front of a sculpture of the Sea shows the shape of it. There were young people fishing and kayaking near the edge. We walked there and I had to put my feet in it. Right next to the hotel were the remains of an old church.
As we looked across the Sea we were able to see our first glimpse of the Golan Heights where the Jordanians fought the Israelies. It is a crucial point in defending Israel. It seems like everywhere we went there was a mixture of peaceful stories with violent ones. I treasured that time on the Sea of Galilee. It seemed to me that the time there must have been a time of preparation, training of disciples, time alone with God, really, a peaceful time in many ways.