06. Jul 2025

Belfast - Downpatrick

Photo 1: "Ephesians 2:14 on the Peace Wall"
This morning as I walked along the Peace Wall I came to this relief depicting the peace that come from the cross of Jesus Christ. Below the cross is an inscription from Ephesians 2:14...

"For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility..."

The artful depiction of this verse was a joint project from Christians from both sides of the wall. I was so happy to see this.

Photo 2: Davy is 74 years old. He has a cross tattooed on his forehead which caught my attention... and Davy has been living on the streets on Belfast for 18 years. Walking as a pilgrim, I can somewhat relate to being homeless, particularly when you are looking for a dry place to eat your lunch when it is raining. Even though I carry a credit card and cash with me, every day is a quest for survival that asks the questions: Will I make it through this day? Where will I find food and water sources? Where will I find a sleeping space at the end of a day? Davy told me he was a follower of Jesus, said that as a kid he would walk a few milies to go to Sunday School. I told him about Stewart, how God helped him move from the streets to his own home. I prayed with Davy... and bought his lunch.

Photo 3: "Wrong way?"
What a day! I got off to a good start and needed to cover 40 kilometers to Downpatrick where St. Patrick's grave is. After about 5 kilometers on the outskirts of Belfast, the display on my flip cell phone fizzled out on me... no GPS, no map, no WhatsApp, no email, no telephone, no camera... nothing. In pressing the phone buttons trying to jerk the screen back to life, my phone somehow made a screenshot of the screen that no longer was working. This documents the moment of disaster. What do I do? I could not take another step towards Downpatrick. I said: "Jesus, you have a solution for this," and decided to take a bus back to Belfast. At the bus stop I saw a young man from India and asked him if he might know of a place where I could get my phone fixed in Belfast. "It just so happened" that his friend worked at a phone repair shop, and he took me there. A new display screen was ordered, would come the next day. Since I already had a room booked and payed for in Downpatrick, I decided to take the bus there, visit St. Patrick's grave and have an extra day of rest after the walk through Scotland.

Photo 4: "Alfie"
On my way to St. Patrick's grave, I saw 5 twelve year olds sitting on a park bench and enjoying the sun that had not been seen so much the last days. We started to talk. I shared my story of how God started to get my attention when I was their age and then prayed for them. Particularly Alfie seemed interested in what I had to say. He gave me a ribbon with a metal claps from his sports club and asked me to through it in a river near my home in Germany. I told him that I did not want to throw things in the river, but would carry the ribbon with me to Germany and post a picture of it on this Blog once I got to the Isar River near my home on my last stage of the Snail-Trail. You cannot really see it so well in this pucture, but ribbon is hanging down from Alfie's left hand. Had I walked the distance today to Downpatrick, I would not have met Alfie and his friends.

Photo 5: The story of St. Patrick fasinates me. Born around 385–387, he was kidnapped by pirates at age 16 and enslaved for six years in the Irish wilderness, where he developed a profound devotion to prayer. Following his escape back to Britain, he had a dream in which the Irish people begged him to return and walk among them once more. He returned to Ireland as a bishop to spread Christianity, famously using the Irish shamrock to teach the concept of the Holy Trinity. The working of the Holy Spirit was evident in his life and ministry. This stone marks Patrick’s final resting place. If you enlarge the photo, you can see that his name is still partially legibel on the stone. I sat there in the late afternoon and prayed that what God started in Ireland in the days of St. Patrick, he would awaken and continue today.