Where Jesus Walked: From Tel Dan to Capernaum
Day two of the tour began at Tel Dan, and almost immediately Israel surprised us again.
This wasn't the dry, dusty landscape I had somehow pictured before the trip. Tel Dan was green and lush, with water rushing through the trees. The Spring of Dan is one of the major sources that feeds the Jordan River, and after only a few days in Israel, I was already realizing how wrong so many of my mental pictures had been.
As beautiful as Tel Dan was, we were there for what had been uncovered among all that green.
At the entrance to the ancient city, we stood among the remains of a gate complex dating to the time of the biblical kings. This was where people would have gathered, business would have been conducted, and judgments would have been made.
Our guide told us about an inscription discovered at Tel Dan that includes the words "House of David." There we were, standing among ancient stones while hearing about archaeological evidence referring to the dynasty of a king I'd known from the Bible since childhood. It was another one of those moments that kept happening in Israel. Names and places that had always existed on the pages of the Bible were suddenly showing up in the landscape around us.
We stood in front of an enormous mud-brick gateway approximately 3,700 years old, dating to the time of Abraham. Our guide pointed out that the gate faces toward Damascus, connecting the landscape around us with the world described in Genesis.
Three thousand seven hundred years.
Somehow, the 2,000-year-old things we'd been seeing were already beginning to seem almost new.
From Tel Dan, we traveled to Caesarea Philippi, near the base of Mount Hermon. The Banias River flows through this area and, like the springs at Tel Dan, eventually helps feed
the Jordan River.
Our guide explained that this was the setting for one of the most familiar conversations between Jesus and His disciples. In Matthew 16, Jesus asks them, "Who do you say I am?" Peter answers, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."
Here, surrounded by a landscape devoted to other gods and a cave associated with the underworld, Jesus declares that He will build His church and "the gates of Hades will not overcome it."
It was becoming impossible to separate the words of Scripture from the landscape around us.
After Caesarea Philippi, we returned to the Sea of Galilee for lunch and then climbed aboard a boat to cross to the other side.
Of everything we'd done so far, this was probably one of the simplest experiences of the trip. There were no ruins to study, inscriptions to decipher, or dates to remember. We were simply on a boat on the Sea of Galilee.
It was magical.
The water stretched around us with the hills of Galilee rising in the distance. These were the waters at the center of some of the Gospel stories I'd known for most of my life. Somewhere on this lake, Jesus and His disciples were caught in a violent storm. The disciples were terrified while Jesus slept in the boat. When they woke Him, He rebuked the wind and waves, and the water became calm.
This was also the water where the disciples saw Jesus walking toward their boat in the middle of the night. Peter asked Jesus to tell him to come to Him, and Jesus simply said, "Come."
And Peter did.
He stepped out of the boat and walked toward Jesus on the water. Then he noticed the wind. He became afraid and began to sink.
Jesus immediately reached out and caught him.
Sitting on a boat on that same body of water, those stories were no longer happening on some vague biblical sea I'd imagined in my head. There was water beneath us, hills around us and wind on our faces. For a little while, there wasn't anything I needed to learn or understand. I just wanted to be there.
Peter's story has taken on an entirely different meaning for me in this season of my life.
Right now, life feels filled with unknowns. There are things I desperately want to work out a certain way and questions I can't answer no matter how many times I turn them over in my mind. I want to trust God with all of it. I believe He is there. I believe He is working. And yet I understand Peter now in a way I didn't as I sat on that boat in 2023.
It's easy to say you trust Jesus when the water is calm. It's much harder when you notice the wind.
I keep wanting to know what's going to happen before I take the next step. I want reassurance that everything will work out the way I hope it will. But Peter wasn't given any of that. Jesus simply told him to come.
Maybe faith isn't pretending the wind isn't there. Maybe it's choosing where to look when it is.
I want to keep my eyes on Him. I want to trust Him when I can't see what's ahead and when the circumstances around me make me afraid. And when I inevitably look at the wind and start to sink, I want to remember the other part of Peter's story.
Jesus didn't let him drown. He reached for him.
Sitting on the Sea of Galilee that afternoon, I couldn't have known how often I would return to Peter's story or how differently I would understand it someday.
After crossing the lake, we saw the remains of a fishing boat more than 2,000 years old. No one knows who owned it or who sailed in it, and there is no reason to believe Jesus or His disciples actually used this particular boat. But it dates to the first century and is the type of fishing boat that would have been on the Sea of Galilee during their lifetimes.
The boat had been constructed primarily from cedar and repaired over its lifetime with many other types of wood. It wasn't difficult to imagine fishermen continually patching and repairing their boats to keep them working.
We also saw a sycamore tree like the one Zacchaeus would have climbed. By this point, it seemed as though almost everything around us could bring another Bible story to life.
We continued to the Mount of Beatitudes, traditionally associated with Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
The setting overlooking the Sea of Galilee was peaceful and beautiful. After a morning filled with archaeology, ancient cities, and explanations, this was a place that didn't seem to need much explaining. I could picture people gathering on these hillsides to listen to Jesus teach.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit..."
"Blessed are those who mourn..."
"Blessed are the peacemakers..."
Sometimes being there was enough.
Our final stop of the day was Capernaum.
Even the sign at the entrance seemed almost impossible to comprehend:
Jesus made Capernaum a center of His ministry in Galilee, and story after story from the Gospels unfolded in this small community beside the water.
We visited the remains of a house traditionally associated with Peter. Archaeologists found that one room in the house eventually stopped being used like the other household spaces and became a gathering place for early Christians. Later structures were built over it to preserve the site.
Our guide explained that this was where Jesus would have stayed with Peter and his mother-in-law. Suddenly, familiar stories started piling on top of one another. Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law here. Somewhere in this community, friends lowered a paralyzed man through a roof because the crowd around Jesus was so large they couldn't reach Him through the door. People walked these streets looking for Him, listening to Him and asking Him for healing.
Nearby stood the remains of a beautiful white limestone synagogue. The structure we could see was built later, but beneath it are remains of an earlier synagogue dating closer to the time of Jesus.
And everything was so close together. The house, the synagogue, the shoreline.
That may have been one of the biggest surprises of Galilee for me. In my head, the stories of the Bible had always existed separately, almost like individual scenes. Here, we could physically walk from one to another.
I could picture Jesus leaving the house and walking to the synagogue. I could picture fishermen coming in from the lake. I could imagine word spreading through this little town that Jesus was nearby and people gathering to find Him.
It wasn't just Scripture anymore. It was a town, and we were walking through it.
By the time we climbed back onto the bus that evening, we'd stood beside a gate from the time of Abraham, seen archaeological evidence bearing the name of David's dynasty, visited the place where Jesus asked His disciples who they believed He was, crossed the Sea of Galilee singing praise songs, and walked through the town where He lived and ministered.
It was almost too much to absorb in a single day, but that was becoming the rhythm of Israel. Every place seemed to add another piece to a world I'd known through Scripture for years.
The stories weren't changing. They were gaining landscapes.
And maybe that's one of the reasons I'm so grateful to be writing about this journey now. The Sea of Galilee is no longer just a name on a page when I read about Peter stepping out of that boat. I can picture the water. I can picture the hills. I can remember the wind.
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