Dear Friends, I was visiting Dawn Waterhouse last week and she said, “Belinda, I’ve been watching all this terrible news about the Middle East. It is so terrible! Tell me, what are you doing about it?”
“What are you doing about it?” It’s a confronting question, but particularly confronting coming from someone who will be 101 next birthday!
“We are praying,” I said to Dawn, “We are praying on Sundays and all through the week.” And that is true. We continue to pray as part of our Sunday worship – and at the 8am weekday prayers on Zoom. (Anyone is welcome to join the morning prayer time – from 8am to 8:30am – on this link –https://zoom.us/j/961173086).
And we pray, I know, in our personal prayers as well. I found myself waking up last night – after yesterday’s memorials for those lost on 7th Oct and the scenes of Beirut being bombed and the families gathered at Sydney airport – with the song of those Lebanese Christians running through my head; “In the shadow, in the shadow, in the shadow of your wings.” I prayed, in the words of Psalm 17:8-9, “Keep them, God, as the apple of your eye; hide them in the shadow of your wings, from those who are out to destroy them, from the enemies who surround them.”
I have attached a prayer guide – prepared by Baptist World Alliance – for Israel and the Palestinian territories. You can also join a live prayer time on Zoom organised by the European Baptist Fellowship on Zoom at 19.00 Central European Time (CET) on the last Wednesday of every month (it would be 4am on Thursday morning our time). To register. After registering here – https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZApceGqpz0iEtZGRNIuIMS_Vca4pa54kuCR#/registration you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
“We are also encouraging people to give to help those who are being displaced,” I told Dawn. As I mentioned in last week’s Sunday to Sunday, Baptist World Aid is asking us to help support their Baptist partner in Lebanon who is working to care for people who have been newly displaced, readying Baptist churches and school to provide safe places to sleep, mattresses, blankets and bedding, hygiene kits, food parcels and cooked meals. If you can help them with the resources to continue this work, use this link to give today to Baptist World Aid’s Lebanon Crisis Response
“But if you have been asking people to pray and to give,” Dawn said, “so far it hasn’t done anything to stop the fighting.”
I had no answer for this. She is right. So far, the fighting and the death toll is only increasing.
Does that mean we stop praying and we stop giving? I think the answer is no. Does that mean we acknowledge our inadequacy in the face of this terrible evil? I think that the answer to that is yes. Yes, we are unable to stop what is happening now, but no, that does not mean that we stop remembering that this terrible thing is taking place within the human community that we share.
Because one day we hope for peace. This is what we are praying for and giving ourselves and our resources for – the hope that one day there will be peace. And by praying and giving during this time when we felt hopeless – we will be able to recognise when that day comes; to welcome it with Israeli brothers and sisters and Palestinian brothers and sisters and Lebanese brothers and sisters.
I always remember – when I think of Dawn – of her account of the end of World War II, of how she and her husband “had gone to the pictures for a rare night out without the baby. As they were driving home to her parents at Mugga Way, suddenly all the lights went on and the blackout curtains went up. {And] They realised the war was over.
“So we raced in,” [Dawn recalls] “and everybody was speechless with joy…And Dad had saved some of my wedding champagne and so he went and he opened this bottle of champagne and we all had to write our name on the cork and the date.”
The next day [they] to the top of Mount Ainslie to see all the lights of Canberra; “that was just magic, oh that made you cry. It was really just so unexpected and so beautiful after such a dismal, long time. We had forgotten what it looked like.”
https://cfc.shorthandstories.com/happy-100th-birthday-dawn-waterhouse/index.htmlcelebrate
Now we cannot imagine what that peace would look like, and it does feel like all our prayers and gifts do very little but let us keep praying and committing to acts of peace.
Grace and peace,
Belinda