Praying for Peace in the Holy Land

Friends, peace be with you.

I’m writing this to you on Tuesday October 10, knowing that things could be drastically different by this weekend. However, Israel is on my mind today and I hope it’s on yours too. I think of the words of Psalm 122:6-9

For the peace of Jerusalem pray, “May they prosper, those who love you.”

May peace abide in your walls, and security be in your towers.

For the sake of my family and friends, let me say, “Peace upon you.”

For the sake of the house of the LORD, our God, I will seek good things for you. 
 

Indeed, we pray for the peace of Jerusalem and all of Israel. The ever-present conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is so complicated that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. On the one hand, having a small piece of land, approximately a third the size of the State of Iowa, in the Middle East where Jews can have a homeland and feel safe doesn’t seem like an unreasonable expectation. On the other hand, the Palestinian people who have lived there and who continue to live there deserve a peaceful homeland as well. Afterall, some of them were killed by Hamas because they wanted to live in peace with the Israelis.

An Israeli is going to talk about how they survived many attacks by the surrounding foreign powers since the reestablishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948, which they take as a mark of God’s providential care for them. The fact that they have survived shows that it is God’s will that they live there, though, I’m sure, having financial and weaponry assistance from the United States and other first world countries also helps. A Palestinian will respond that way along with the fact that they have been living on the land the Israelis are claiming since the time of the Roman Empire. They will ask why they were punished for a European holocaust of the Jews, why their homes and land were taken away from them because of the malfeasance of Germany. And back and forth they debate going all the way back to when Isaac was chosen by Abraham and Ishmael was sent to wander. Except that’s not the way it took place in the Islamic scriptures where Ishmael is seen as an Arab and is favored by Abraham while Isaac is forsaken.

I think this is why St. Paul makes it so clear in Philippians 3:20 that, for Christians “...our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” We can’t allow ownership of property to bring us to war with one another.