“Keep those you have given me true to your name so that they may be one like us” John 19
My heart is ( perhaps irrationally ) breaking at the fighting in the Holy land. I wonder Is Abraham watching on from a heavenly place at his star numbered descendants with the heaviest of hearts.
Politically I’m sure I am naive at best at the cause of the troubles. But because this land holds a special place in my heart I do know a God version of its history.
Why in all of His created world would God choose this geographical location for his chosen people ? This little bit of land was to influence all those who travelled through it to trade, not rich enough in its own resources to have power, but enough to sustain and ensure a dependence on a dependable God. As those richer nations came through they were to see how those who belonged to the God of the Israelites were different. In how they treated their widows, how they acted with justice and integrity.
The land holds the history, the stories, the memories of a people chosen to bring salvation to the rest of the world. It has been taken over and ruled by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Macedonians, the Ptolemaic, the Seleucids, the Hasmoneans and then the Romans each leaving a mark on this promised land and its people. 1000s of years of victories and defeats. Temples desecrated, the people dispersed, regathered, dispersed again. Their very identity threatened and challenged.
I don’t pretend to have even the beginning of any answers, just a deep sadness and an understanding that when people have been defeated and hurt, they put up walls. We do it personally and we do it as nations. Walls to keep some people out and others in, and if we still don’t feel safe we either submit or we attack becoming the very bullies that we once despised.
I’m praying for this very sacred and special place. It’s beyond the power of most of us to change the situation in the Holy land, but not beyond the power of God. We can from this distance only pray and strive for peace in the little corners of the world we do have dominion over and hope that with Gods grace it will spread to touch many other corners.
