Let there be peace, this year

When my wife, Mary, and I visited Israel about three years ago, we found there extremely nice people in such places as Tiberias, Jerusalem, the area around the Sea of Galilee, and Nazareth. They were used to tourists, and obviously recognized us as such fairly quickly.

Then we came to the day we went to Jericho and Bethlehem. To get there, we had to cross a border of such, a tall wall that was decorated with graffiti.

Guess what the people, the Palestinian people, were like? They were extremely nice. They talked about how poor they were. They talked about the problems they faced. They talked about that wall, at length.

What to do about and with Israel is a sincerely difficult question. Israel is a small, mostly dry area of about 8,000 miles or about the same land area as New Jersey.

It has ell, for one, just recognizing Israel’s existence is enough to push many people over the edge. At around 8,000 square miles, the state of Israel has roughly the same land area as the state of New Jersey,.

But the situation is that Israel has been a place of conflict and even ward since it came into existence in 1948. Even our tour guide talked about that.

Ironically, the only time I ever felt a degree of worry was when a teenager with an Uzi came onto the bus as we were at that checkpoint going into Palestinian land.

This week has been a particularly bloody time for the land that we call Holy. Rockets have flown, persons have died. Tourists, I suspect, have fled early.

Through it all, this country has stood by Israel and I pray will continue to. There are about as many Jews in this country as there are in Israel and we must never forget that.

Course (with help from Shane Raynor a wonderful blogger), there's also that whole end times thing. "Many Christians, especially evangelical dispensationalists, believe that the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and its subsequent capture of Jerusalem in 1967 are signs that we’re living in the last days. (Of course, when you’re talking about almost two thousand years since the Roman Siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple, “last days” is a relative term.) Some argue that people who hold rigidly to this “we’re in the last days” eschatology have created such a formidable movement that some unfolding events may really be self-fulfilling prophecies. As these end times “experts” have gained influence over the years, some have compared them to spectators at a football game who decided to join the game and influence the outcome," Raynor writes.

What to do about all this, one wonders?

I think the main thing is keeping the main thing in front of us. As we were outside the Garden Tomb, one of the two sites proposed as Jesus' resting place between death and resurrection, I noticed there a little sign. It said, "Pray for peace in Jerusalem."

I think that's about what we have left to us. We've tried the whole diplomacy thing, and it gets us little places but not to the main thing, which is peace, true peace.

Both sides need to calm down and learn to live, and greater minds than mine have come up with plans that would do that. Israel must not give up, in my opinion, Jerusalem, but I think that wall must come down someday as well.

When one limits freedom, even in the search for safety, one only spurs more difficulty. Pray for peace this year not only in Jerusalem, but also in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere.