Meeting of Desert Flower

Today, January 26, we, the members of the Desert Flower group, gathered together again in Saint Peter's Church in Jaffa. In the first part of the meeting we continued our discussion on faith, a discussion we had begun last time we met.

The question that was posed this time was: Why did God create the world? After all, God is wholeness and perfection. The answer can be found in the New Testament. God is totally love and love is something that cannot remain closed off. It must give and share, love cannot just remain between Father and Son and Son and Father. God has the need to give His love to others, to us, human beings.

We then prepared lunch and ate together. Over the meal we brought each other up to date on what has happened in our lives since the last meeting. After lunch we went for a walk around Tel Aviv.

In the second part, after the lunch break, we gathered again in the chapel and continued our reading from the New Testament, out of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. We had decided last time to read the Book of Acts in order to prepare for our trip in the summer to Italy. There, we intend to make a reverse pilgrimage, from the Land of Israel to Rome – in the footsteps of the Apostles. This time we read the chapters 3 to 8, the story of the primitive community in Jerusalem, the death of Stephen, the first follower of Jesus who died a martyr's death, a death similar to that of Jesus himself, and the acts of Philip who preached the Gospel in Samaria and towards of the south of the land.

At the end of the day, we participated in the weekly Sunday mass on Saturday night in the Jaffa community. Then we parted from one another, already awaiting the next meeting.