On October 7th, this past Saturday, the militant terrorist group Hamas invaded Israel and fired thousands of missiles at targets in Israel. Hostilities between Israel and Hamas, or Israel and the Palestinian people have been ongoing for a very long time. The list of grievances in this historic conflict, now loud and intense, is so long and nuanced that it’s difficult to say anything without missing or covering over someone else’s suffering.
CGGC Pastor Dan Masshardt of Fairview Bethel Church of God, in Mechanicsburg, PA, has been to Israel a number of times. Often Pastor Dan takes groups of people to Israel so they can journey through the biblical narratives of Jesus, and literally walk in the same places that Jesus did. In fact, Pastor Dan has another trip planned for June of 2024 to do just this. Over the course of these excursions, Pastor Dan has come to know and love not only the land, but the people who live there, Israeli and Palestinian, and so the events of this past week have been felt poignantly for Dan in ways that they might not be for some of us.
In light of that, Pastor Dan wrote a blog post on his personal blog Going Deeper, titled “What I Pray when I Pray for Israel”. We found it helpful in our own prayers for Israel and the ensuing conflict. We hope Pastor Dan’s reflection helps you too.
By: Pastor Dan Masshardt
“Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid”. Micah 4:4
The tragic and shocking events this weekend put a sense of urgency and weight to the same prayers that I have prayed (not often enough) for the land where God become flesh in Jesus of Nazareth.
The first time I set foot on that land was in 2018. I went to walk in the literal footsteps of Jesus as I seek to follow the way of discipleship and to understand the Bible just a bit better.
What I didn’t expect but found nonetheless were the challenges facing the varied people who live in that land today. I have reflected often since and increasingly after subsequent trips about what it might mean to follow the Prince of Peace in a place of ongoing conflict.
The words of the Old Testament Prophet Micah look forward to a better time than what the people he wrote to were experiencing when he penned those words that God spoke through him.
“Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid”. Micah 4:4
One of the great goals of the Bible’s grand story is the elusive idea of peace.
Shalom.
For many of us reading this in the United States of America, those words don’t seem unrealistic. I’ve occasionally shared a picture looking up while laying in my hammock in my back yard looking up at the huge leaves of the towering sycamore trees. Fear never once crosses my mind as I lay there.
Whether or not those going about their business in the southern towns of Israel on Shabbat, the weekly day of rest, or those gathering at an outdoor music festival had any fear in their minds in the days before this weekend’s violence, I don’t know. But things changed dramatically and terribly.
The essence of terrorism is not only the awful violence itself but the fear that it could happen anywhere and to anyone at anytime. The heinous acts of Hamas militants were just that – intended and perhaps effective at putting fear and terror into the minds of Israelis going about their everyday lives.
“…and no one will make them afraid.”
My prayer for the Jewish people of Israel.
They came a generation or two ago in the aftermath of the Holocaust and I believe that collective memory often remains. Can there be a place for us to make our homes where we do not need to be afraid? Afraid of persecution. Afraid of hatred and murder of startling numbers of a whole ethnicity. These people have persevered in strength in many ways. But this weekend’s terror shows that violence is not only in the past…
There is another group of people who live in the same land. One of them is a newer friend who lives in the town where Jesus was born – Bethlehem. He is a Palestinian Christian. For him to come to see me when staying in Jerusalem he leaves his car behind – it’s way too hard to get a car through the checkpoint. There is a wall around the town of Bethlehem that runs in some form (wall or fence) around most of the area of known as the West Bank. The Israelis built this wall to make them a bit less afraid of possible attacks from any groups seeking to do them harm.
But this wall and its checkpoints have another effect. They make the Palestinian people a bit more afraid. Afraid that it will take them hours in line to pass through. Afraid that they will be harassed or perhaps humiliated on the way through to work or school by soldiers that may think of them primarily as a potential threat rather than a fellow human being made the image of God.
Like the Israeli Jews now living in the same land, these people also have a hard history. As the Jewish people fled persecution in search of a place to sit under their own trees unafraid, many of the Arab population that we call Palestinians today were forced out from under their own trees in yards around homes that were in their families for too many generations to count.
Even in their own limited areas today, they cannot rest unafraid. Justice is often denied in Israeli courts and generational farmland may be confiscated for the building of more Jewish settlements. They are under the political and military control of Israel, even though they do not have the equal rights of citizenship.
“…and no one will make them afraid.”
My prayer for the Palestinian people in the land.
For the past 5 years, my prayers have been that all of these people would find a way to seek peace together. To share the land that so many significant events in the Bible took place.
There have been times when I felt like those prayers were being answered in small but significant ways. When parents who have lost children in the oingoing conflict find a way to sit down together in spite of the pain. When Israeli soldiers see the poor way that Palestinians are often treated and seek a better way. When Palestinians see the shared humanity in their Jewish neighbors.
This week is not one of those times. Instead it feels like those prayers amount to so little and all that’s left is lament.
Lament for pain turned to hate turned to violence. As members of the militant Hamas group perpetrated such wonton violence against unsuspecting civilians with many hundreds killed and violated and…
Life is so precious. Each one, created in the image of God. Created to know him and represent his goodness and beauty into the world as we live and love and serve one another.
So many of those precious lives taken. Taken by other precious lives who have been overcome by and discipled into hate.
I believe God is the God of love and justice. It is right to seek justice in response to such immense violence. But I fear that a right measure of justice will fall by the wayside and instead be overwhelmed by a desire for revenge.
So now a people who have tragically been made afraid will most likely make the other people afraid. Everyday folks throughout the cramped community of Gaza will brace themselves for the expected onslaught that will likely end with not only the deaths of the Hamas perpetrators of these terrible crimes but also many more civilians as well.
Sometimes real peace feels hopeless.
But the words of Micah 4 remain at the heart of my own prayer for all the people. Perhaps peace and justice will only come when Jesus returns. But I believe Jesus when he taught that the kingdom of God is in our midst. We need a new set of eyes to see it. With God, all things are possible.
He will judge between many peoples
and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
for the Lord Almighty has spoken.
Micah 4:3-4
CGGC eNews—Vol. 27, No. 41
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