“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”
These words of Jesus capture well the lament I feel in my heart for the people of the Holy Land. I am torn to tears, again, by the brutality of our sinful humanity.
I reflected in my Wednesday morning devotional the difficult lesson from the story of Cain killing Abel – both the offspring of Adam and Eve. When a human being kills another human being, it is a brother killing a brother, and God weeps. Jesus longed for all of God’s children to hear God’s clarion call for peace and mutual regard, and we would not; and we still do not.
Ever since the Palestinians were forcibly pushed out of land they had occupied for 1900 years before WWII to create the nation of Israel, both sides have repeatedly sinned and killed the other. This latest outbreak of war is the deadliest yet. Hamas’ surprise and brutal attack on Israeli citizens was horrifically barbaric. But so too has the systemic oppression been by Israel toward the innocents who occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – 40% of whom are children. Building Israeli settlement on promised Palestinian land, unauthorized searches and seizures, police and military brutality, refusal of clean water, food and energy to the most populated 25-mile strip in the world, are all part of Israel’s (and the United States) responsibility for the killing that continues. Ever since the ’67 War, both sides have thrown the rocks of their own sin at the other … and God weeps, and so we should weep, and repent, and resolve to pray and work for a lasting peace in the region – a peace that is a foundational belief of the three great Abrahamic faiths that were birthed there: Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
Tomorrow night, Cammy and I will be the guests of Muslim friends for dinner. They are good, faithful and peace-loving people. This lament for Jerusalem and all of God’s people in the Holy Land will be our prayer before dinner. I ask that it be yours.
Connecting God and Grace to Self and Community,
