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Graham, Stephen, 1884-1975

"A Tramp's Sketches"

We visited the cottage where the water was changed into wine.
At Bethany we prayed at Lazarus' grave.
We lived with the life of Jesus as the story has been told. It was a
second pilgrimage, an underlining of the essentials of the first. We
finished the first pilgrimage at the Church of the Tomb on the day
after our arrival in Jerusalem; we should finish the second on the
last day of Holy Week, at the triumphant Easter morning.
On the Friday before Palm Sunday we went out to Bethany and slept
in the monastery which is built "where Martha served." Next day we
returned to Jerusalem with olive branches, palms and wild flowers,
scattering blossoms as we walked. On Saturday evening and in the
morning of Palm Sunday we filled the churches with our branches. Two
aged pilgrims who had died were buried on Palm Sunday. They lay in
open coffins in church dressed in the shrouds they had worn at Jordan,
covered with olive branches and little blue wild flowers (Jacob's
ladder), which the pilgrims had picked for them at Bethany. On their
faces was perfect peace. The pilgrims thought them happy to die in the
Holy Land and be buried there.
The crown of the pilgrimage was Holy Week. By Palm Sunday all the
pilgrims were back in Jerusalem from their little pilgrimages to
Nazareth, Jericho, and Jordan.


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