When the Fire is Starting to Blaze: Pray for Peace in Israel and Palestine

I am in my mother and father's house now, my friends.   

We are in Western Michigan,  enjoying the sweet, cool breezes. Our days are filled with summery bliss, with sailing and swimming, with late morning cups of coffee and mounds of my mother's incredible food (sorry,  honey, my husband says sheepishly, but your mother's grape leaves are a little better than yours). 

But our nights are spent in Palestine.   

After the children are finally asleep, we fold away the day's activity, the dishes, the laundry, the stray cups.  Then we go home.   

We scroll through the headlines, the news feeds. We jump from news sources to first-hand accounts from our friends,  posting updates from our old neighborhoods.  It's a strange thing, you know, when your old hometown becomes a war zone.  Your friends from home, from your old neighborhood, start posting on their social media pages things that you wish you had never seen. 

But we cannot look away.  We sift through the reports, piecing information together, trying to reconcile ourselves to what is happening at home.  The news is raw, and yet we pick and pick, to keep peeling back layers and layers of skin.  To reach what?  The flesh?  The bone?

 

We do not talk much of food this time.  It is hard to have much of an appetite.  We set our plates aside for now: the feast must give way for the fast.  

Some members of the Christian community in Palestine are calling for a day of fasting tomorrow.  If you are able, and if you are a person of faith, please light a candle, or say a prayer, or spend some time fasting and praying for peace, and for comfort for the many families who are suffering right now.   

Here is an inspiring perspective, recorded in a recent post by the Telos Group, a nonprofit organization that seeks to positively encourage relations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: 

"The answer is not to seek revenge, because we will never meet our beloved ones, but will instead create additional victims. Peace is the answer. Our blood is the same and our enemy is the same: occupation, oppression, hatred, and fear." Bassam Aramin, Bereaved Father,  Palestinian Spokesperson


Praying with you for peace,

Jessica