The Monastery at the Brook Cherith
In traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho the road narrows almost to a bridal path. “So rough and straight is it,” says Marion Harlan, “that I insisted upon alighting and walking round a sharp spur where the track is a narrow ledge overhanging a precipice.” The silence is said to be oppressive to the spirit and to the ear. Upon the heights above are seen winding paths, slight threads, apparently, leading to the black mouths of caves. Here the hermits dwelt in their cells ages ago. On the north bank of this wild gorge—this Judean glen—we see a Greek monastery. There are the little paths by which the monks ascended and descended to this, their mountain home. These monks spend their time in prayer and in the cultivation of little patches of flowers in the bottom of the valley. In the picture we look toward the north and can form a very accurate idea of the depth and darkness of the Glen Kerith—Wady Kelt—“one of the most sublime ravines in Palestine.” The founders of the monastery on the mountain’s side believed it to be the site, or near the site, of Elijah’s hiding place during the miraculous drouth that occurred in Ahab’s reign, and where he was fed by ravens while the famine raged in Palestine. In this region Christ wandered when He was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness after the opening heavens, the descending dove and the Father’s voice. Here he was with the wild beasts; here he fasted forty days and forty nights; here he resisted the temptations of the adversary by the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
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