Shepherds, Service, Shopping and Incarnation
A Real WOW Day
Some days are just ordinary and some are really WOW days. This day was a WOW day. Since we ended up in the church of the Nativity one might think that it was that that gave me the chills. However, it was not the original Incarnation that was the kicker it was the Incarnation that is going on today in two very special places we visited. Read on…
The Shepherds Field
In the town of Beitshour near Bethlehem there is an archeological dig that shows there were in the time of Christ shepherds living in the area. There is a cave and a compound where they lived

We began in the cave where we read the story form Luke (2:8-20) of the shepherds and the angels. We sang the song “While Shepherds Watch”. Then, after s period of exploration, we gathered in a beautiful church with incredible acoustics and sang

Shopping
We spent some time shopping at a great store.
Holy Family Hospital – Bethlehem
I spoke of Incarnational work this is one place it is being done, Holy Family Hospital. This is a maternal hospital equal to any in the United States. Run by the Sovereign Order of Malta this63 bed maternity hospital has seen the births of over 40,000 babies since February 1990. That is over three thousand births a year. No one is turned away because of lack of funds. Their mission is to provide a state of the art maternity hospital because the poorest deserve the best.
This is not easy in an occupied land where unemployment runs 70%. Patients only pay for about 45% of hospital costs. The remaining 55% must be raised to continue the mission.
I said this was incarnational work. Think about it. Located some 800 meters from the birth of Christ, this hospital not only helps women to give birth to healthy babies it provides top notch care to the poorest of the poor, those people Christ called the least of us and said w3hat ever we do unto them we do to Him.

During the siege Israeli tanks attacked hospital twice. The first time a tank pulled up and strafed the hospital with a machine gun. The second time, a tank fired a rocket at the statue of Mary atop the chapel trying un successfully to knock it down.
Once a pregnant woman was trying to cross at a checkpoint that closed at 10pm. She and her

We held Eucharist in the chapel of that hospital. Celebrating the Word made Flesh according to

Find out more about Holy Family Hospital at http://www.HolyFamilyHospital-bethlehem.org.
Diyar Consortium
Diyar Consortium is a group of outreach ministries run by Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem under Pastor Mitri Raheb whose family has lived in Bethlehem since the time of Christ. Fourteen years ago with $300 and an old desk and a few old chairs he founded the consortium to reach out and meet the needs of his neighborhood. Now the consortium is one of the largest employers in the West Bank. 40% of his clients are Christian and 60% are Muslim.
He strongly believes that Jesus Christ came and brought us salvation and that it is our job as Christians to extend the Good News of that salvation to others. He sees other religions as so busy trying to earn their salvation through following laws, etc. that they do not have time to help others.
He sees that the situation in the West Bank can only get worse. He believes that the Israeli attack on Gaza was a contrived attempt to strengthen Hamas and thereby make a two state solution impossible. He sees the establishment of Israeli settlements a thinly veiled attempt to split the West bank into three sections where the Israelis have all the resources of the land and the

Fr. John made another donation from the money we collected to Pastor Raheb.

For more about the Consortium see: www.diyar-consortium.org and www.BrightStarsBethlehem.org.
We ate lunch at the center and shopped in the gift shop.
Church of the Nativity
We were quite fortunate at the Church of he Nativity. There was hardly any one there. We actually got to spend quite a bit of time in the grotto where Christ was born and laid in a manger.

Historians say this is the place where Christ was born because when Constantine’s queen Helen came here in 330CE she found people worshiping here claiming this to be the birthplace. She ordered a church to be built over the grotto and we can still see the original mosaics under the floor of the existing church.

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