Pastor's Page 
| Pastor's Page |
|
Peace in the Middle East...
Friends, Preconceived ideas and notions. They can certainly get us into trouble. Not getting all of the information before we make our decisions may make life easier, but it leaves us with a poor understanding – and may make our final decisions suspect.
Unfortunately, that was the way I had made up my mind in regard to the issues that are confronting the peoples of Israel and Palestine. I took what the news media was saying and had come up with my own conclusion about who was right and who was wrong. In fact, it all seemed pretty cut and dried.
But then I decided to go to Israel for my last class of seminary. The tour/trip sounded great – we were going to visit many archeological sites, many of which I had only heard about or seen pictures. Many of them had true biblical significance. Walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Worship in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Oh, and, by the way, we will “meet with leaders in the peace and reconciliation movement, and discuss the theological basis for their beliefs.”
The old truism is, in fact, true. There ARE two sides to every coin. As cut and dried as I saw things prior to boarding the plane, they were far from as simple as I had been led to believe.
We met with people who had deeply held beliefs on both sides of the issue. Walked through deserted streets where no Palestinian was allowed to walk. Saw teenage soldiers with machine guns walk slowly through our bus, checking passports.
We talked with an Israeli mother who had lost her son to a Palestinian sniper as he stood guard on the border. With a Palestinian wife whose husband had been killed by an Israeli soldier for driving in the wrong place at the wrong time. She now needed to raise her two small daughters without the benefit of their father.
But we didn’t meet with them separately. No, they came together to express the raw pain and futility that this “war” is causing. They came to tell us that there is no easy solution – no simple way to clear up problems that have been thousands of years in the making. They didn’t ask us to take sides, in fact they requested that we didn’t. They only wanted us to hear and to know… to see and to feel. They wanted us to care… to abide and to accompany.
I now have so many new people in my prayers each day. People who live in fear. People who live in constant unknowing. People whose homes and lives have been bulldozed into piles of rubble. People who witnessed the horrors of the holocaust. People who simply want the right to continue – to continue to live. Settlers. Refugees. Priests. Rabbis. Muftis. Palestinians. Israelis. People who are working, day in and day out, for peace and for reconciliation and for justice.
For us, there is no simple solution. But I pray to God that there might be peace. Peace for all the people of the Middle East.
Blessings, |
