"Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together" (Psalm 122:3).

For she is beautiful—Jerusalem;
Her beauty is as no other city on the earth;
The beauty of her houses built of stone,
The mountains standing around her,
Her towers, her domes, her minarets,
The beauty of the centuries which lies
   Preserved within her boundaries.

Thy mountain air as sweet as nectar,
Thy scent of fragrant pine,
All mingling with the breeze of morning,
With chimes of bells divine;
Imprisoned in thee in dreamy slumber
   Are trees and mellow stone;
Within thy heart a wall of valor,
   A city proud—and lone.

It was in Jerusalem that God chose to work out His plan of redemption, it is also a city of tears and blood, of hope and faith. The center of pilgrimage for both Judaism and Christianity and the third most sacred place for Moslems, it has all too often been the scene of bloody strife as men fought and died to gain possession of its hallowed shrines. There is a saying in Jerusalem that "when God created the world, He gave to Jerusalem nine parts of beauty and to the rest of the world He gave but one. Of suffering He gave one part to the world; to Jerusalem He gave nine."

Thus, amid all the amazing things to be seen and felt in Israel today—the richness of its traditions, the wealth of its archaeological discoveries, the renown of its Dead Sea Scrolls, the determined march of its progress—one more amazing thing would I mention: that sense of destiny that hovers over the land. Perhaps one senses it most as he rounds the corner of the last alleyway of Old Jerusalem and emerges into the broad, open space from which the massive, rough stone face of the western wall of the temple mount rises to the sunlit sky. Before that wall, I have felt the persistence that brought these people over land and sea to their home again, after two thousand years of wandering. I have listened to the murmur of the groups immersed in prayer. I have seen the men, as if moved by some inner compulsion, form into circles and begin the song and the slow, graceful movements of their sacred dance, hands all linked together or resting on the shoulders of one another. Round and round they shuffle, circles within circles, youths expressing hope, children sensing the excitement, old men with faces lit with joy, fathers feeling the stateliness of fulfillment, their women watching proudly from near-by. No other nation in the world has such an old stone wall as this one that has felt the tears, listened to the prayers, and now watches the joy of its people. It is amazing, and the end is not yet.

—S.S. Times