Gaza City Invaded

The endless fight goes on, but this time with an all out invasion and 22 Palestinians killed over 1 Isreali soldier. One act with centuries of history to back it up; with an ancient trail of passions that, honestly, I don't know much about.

My Christian pysche tells me that I should back Isreal up with all my heart, and I really want to, but my conscience (along with my ignorance) will only let me go so far.

Who is the oppresed and who is the oppresor? Injustices have been inflicted upon both sides with equal brutality...am I right?

As I sift through the words of the prophet Isaiah, the central theme all over the page is exile, then restoration. Are these words playing a part in the battle that rages across the world as I type in my air conditioned house in suburban America? I read the ancient Scriptures about the destruction of the Isreali State and it just so happens that since then, in the very century in which I have been born, the Diaspora is reconciled and Isreal's State forms again, of course causing another exile - that of the Arabs in the land. This has happened in the century of War, the century of the machine, the century of propaganda, the nuclear century where more destruction of the human race is possible than ever before in history.

I do not pretend to know much about this and I am certainly no scholar, but I only come with questions.

As a Christian I have never truely dug deep in the historic Old Testament. The works of the prophets were books filled with the prophesies of Jesus and reassurances of his Messianic calling. I hadn't ever truely read these books and surely not with a mind open to understand what was happening historically. Now, of course, I'm older, and the prophet's voice of what I read in my peaceful quiet time rings like a war siren in my head as I scan the BBC articles.

No, this is not something to understand by reading a single Wikipedia article, but I can understand injustice and grieve over it. Even if I'm ignorant. Sometimes things are hidden from the "wise and prudent."

All that to say, I hope to be very wise and prudent in the affairs of my world, especially in the affairs of the chosen people of God, whether I like what they do or not. I am a branch, grafted in to drink from the nourishment of the olive tree...I pray I am not arrogant, nor ignorant.

All the more I wait for the Prince of Peace to establish his kingdom on the earth, to let the new Jerusalem be delivered as a bride adorned for her husband. All the more his coming is near, and this is my faith and this may be the only end for peace in that region; for peace anywhere, our hearts included.

For out of the heart comes so much deceit and who knows what we are capable of doing reacting out of the insecurities, lies, frustrations of our wounded and unhealed hearts. Even if innocent blood is on the hands of Isrealis and Palestinians both, it is on this American's also...who will heal us from this condition?

Whether we say yes in this age, or in the age to come it is Jesus Christ our Lord.

"Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send? Who is blind like the one committed to me, blind like the servant of the Lord?"

Isaiah 42: 16 & 19

The "real world" flashes before me in all of its deceit. I see so much. What is it that drives its anxieties into our heads like brain surgery, a mad surgeon content on one thing: hopeless confusion.

And here is what passes within us to "be what we were suspossed to be," here is all that we think we are, concluding into one passive passion, one not fully conscious, one filled with the stuff of everydayness; here is what the great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber called the It-world.

And when it passes before us we have a hard time distinguishing it from the You-world; the world of encounter; the world of true persons encountering each other. I will not say that this is the only place of reality because the It-world is a part of our lives, but let us not confuse one for the other.

The modern machine has become our friend, not our tool. This is confusion. This is the place where true persons become a mass of resource; souls become shovels to break up the ground for no seed, but for more mechinization, seeds require waiting.

And who will be blind enough to see? And who will listen like the deaf? In one of Jesus's parables, these were called in for the Great Banquet because those originally invited had things to take care of, houses to attend to, payments to be payed for, the "real world" to look after. So the lame, the crippled, the blind were called (Luke 14).

There is a world that tempts me to brush over the invitation with a wave of my hand and hurry off away from the "fanatics." It is a world I must enter into, but how will I be lame enough, desperate enough to blindly accept this invitation when it comes to me on my way to such important meetings, such busy details, such crucial worries? Will I fail enough to be lying on the street, begging for food when it comes? Will I fail this world? Will I be hungry when it comes?

May hunger, may lameness, may blindness, may crippledness, may desperation truely be my yes.

It is in the arms of Abba where we can truely know our condition. For the love of Jesus is what brings healing to our wounds. May we not forget where the Lord found us, and where we wait eagerly for the glory we hope for.