Come and help us carry our cross
Won't you come and help us carry our cross?" This challenge, from a church leader in the West Bank, reminded me again of the urgent need for peace, reconciliation and hope in the Middle East.
I was in Israel and Palestine in December with several Canadian evangelical church leaders to meet with local Christian leaders, to better understand their situation, to learn of their hopes and concerns and to determine how Canadian Christians can support our brothers and sisters on their difficult journey.
World Vision has been working in Israel and Palestine for more than 30 years, a period of enormous tumult and pain. During that period thousands of Canadians have joined with us to help children there who have been so deeply impacted by the conflict.
It is a travesty that children who live today in the land where the Prince of Peace was born, live with ongoing and very real fear. More than a thousand Jewish, Christian and Muslim children have been killed since 2000, and hundreds of thousands of children in Palestinian communities live in conditions of increasing poverty and despair.
This is a context where the Body of Christ is so needed. And, despite the fact that the local Palestinian Christian community—a significant part of that Body in the Holy Land—is suffering and dwindling in numbers, it is still carrying out its ministry with hope and with a commitment to reconciliation.
I was humbled by stories of Christians who have forged relationships across the physical and social walls dividing Palestinian and Israeli communities, including between Messianic Jews in Israel and Palestinian Christians from the West Bank.
I was inspired by Christian leaders in Bethlehem and elsewhere who are not waiting for political leaders to make peace, but are creating jobs, providing social services and building a future for their communities under extremely difficult circumstances.
And I was deeply moved by the stories of families—Christian, Jewish and Muslim—who have lost children to the conflict, but have refused to succumb to bitterness and hatred. They have come together with one voice as the "Parents Circle" to say that no more parents should have to bury a child because of the conflict, and that all people deserve peace and well being.
It is the Christian community in the Holy Land, working alongside those Jews and Muslims who are committed to reconciliation, that gives me hope that this seemingly intractable conflict will one day cease.
This is not a naïve hope. After so many years of strife, I am aware of the enormous political, geographic and economic challenges, and I know there are groups on all sides who benefit from the conflict and will seek to spoil any peace agreement.
But at the end of the day, there are 10 million people living in Israel and the Palestinian Territory who must find a way to live together and share the land.
One of my deepest concerns is that the international Church itself not be an obstacle to peace. Theological positions on Israel are important and deeply held. But these positions should not stand in the way of Christ's followers acting as agents of reconciliation and supporting those who seek peace and justice for all. Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God."
The Church—both local and international—was instrumental in the abolition of slavery, the fall of the Berlin Wall and of communism in Eastern Europe, and the end of apartheid in South Africa—all situations that seemed beyond hope.
Today, Christians in the Holy Land and internationally—including the Canadian Church—must take up the challenge to help carry the cross: to advocate, to pray and to work for a future where all of God's children, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, can live together without fear.
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