The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista considers what it means to find hope in the apocalypse (Mark 13:1-8): “One of the most popular stops in Israel is a fortress named Masada. It is high up on the Judean desert, overlooking the Dead Sea. In the first century BC, Herod the Great built himself a palace there on a mesa, fortified its walls and made it nearly impenetrable. And yet for all its fortification, its vast food store houses, its complex aqueduct system and ingenious engineering, it is the location of a major defeat, the last stand of a host of Jewish rebels, finally fed up with imperial Roman rule.”