Wednesday, November 29, 2023
In the last two months there have been many prayers offered to accompany the grief and agony of loss in both Israel and Palestine. It is the prayer heard from those who are in the path of destruction; it is the song of the wailing wall.
The October 7th attack[1] by Hamas in Jerusalem and surrounding communities, and Israel’s counter-attack on Gaza, is the latest in the conflict between Arabs and Jews, stemming-back to the womb of Rebekah, where there was a battle going on between her unborn twins, Esau and Jacob. Esau was born first, with Jacob “hot on his heels” (literally) grabbing his brother’s ankle.[2] Esau’s descendants are the Arab nations, while the Jews trace their lineage back to Jacob. Their conflict has been the focus of heartache and struggle for dominance. The modern-day location of this quarrel’s violence is the Gaza-Israel barrier, the land commonly called the Gaza Strip, which separates the Western Bank of the Mediterranean Sea from southern-most Israel.
The right to this land has been in dispute for many years, but is originally-documented as part of God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 15:18-31.
As it is with
any war, it is hard to be precise about who is right and who is wrong. Generally the motives that trigger wars are
muddy, messy, and inevitably dark. In
the end it’s difficult to conclusively justify any
war; God alone knows.
Thirteenth-century venerated priest Thomas Aquinas said: For a war to be just, three things are
necessary – public authority, just cause, right motive.[3] These are difficult issues. I’m not against
doing the hard-thinking about such things; it’s in my nature to do so. A bigger problem is not being consumed by
that process, or our own prejudice. I
therefore usually default to what I’m believe is God’s call for grim times –
prayer. We pray
for Jerusalem…and for Esau’s descendants.
Many people
say you must take a side. Well, I do…I
choose the side of all humanity in the way God says He does…love everyone, and
despise the real enemy, the
destroyer, the purveyor of death, the lover of all that sin embraces. This stand does not come easily, or without
real consequences, and I attempt to keep from judging other peoples’
stand…sometimes with success.
Israel has
had its share of wailing at the wall for the atrocities they have suffered, and
I weep with them in their loss, and the pain they must
endure. I also take the Palestinians to
that weeping wall; they are also part of my tribe. That tribe
is the oldest of earth…begun by a couple in a pristine garden called Eden.
In following
the events from afar (mostly media reports), I find I must work very hard to
keep in mind the only “winners” in any war are those who can go forward without
malice, deeply humble, and committed to putting an
end to such madness.
For You Today
Thinking
about these things always makes me want to answer everybody’s questions and I
can’t do that, because I’m not God. The second-best thing I want to do is go
home, pull the covers over my
head, and not think about it. That also
fails, merely closing the darkness on me as I hide from the truth. All I can offer is to tell us we must raise
our hearts and voices in prayer. And in
doing so, we will find answers…when God desires to reveal them.
There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons
in the Rocky Road library.
Today’s title Image from Pixabay.com
Images without citation are in public domain or cited
via weblinks.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT©
[1]
Read more about the background and history of Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Wikimedia.com
[2]
See Genesis
25:19-34
[3] Bob Phillips, Book of Great Thoughts…, (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1993), 326
