Praying for the Holy Land. (November 2023)

Dear Friends

Like all of you, I have been reeling from the news. Within the space of a week, the Holy Land has exploded into war and the violence has a doom-laden sense of gathering momentum even as I write. And, of course, this is but one more chapter in a long book of suffering which takes in people on all sides. The Hamas attacks in Israel and the brutality of them are being described as “Israel’s 9:11.” The force gathering on the edge of Gaza is one of the largest Israel has mobilised for a generation.

All of this has so many strands and carries so much weight across the decades and centuries. It is a new fury in a tragedy freighted with suffering and lost possibilities. It resonates in some particular ways for us as Christians because this is the land our faith, alongside Jews and Muslims, can call Holy. The sites we may have visited there bring us as physically close to the first century life of Christ that we can ever reach on earth. Israel’s creation after the Holocaust has Britain in a key role. We controlled Palestine from 1920 to 1948 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire under a mandate from the League of Nations. The official international intentions leading up to and beyond the birth of modern Israel were of some sort of two-state settlement: a Jewish state and a Palestinian state living side by side. It never happened. 85% of Palestinians fled what became Israel in the Arab Israeli war of 1948. Chances came and went. All sorts of efforts came and went. There has not been an active peace process for many years.

This Holy Land has been the stage for unimaginable suffering. Israelis have arrived from places in the world where antisemitism has run riot. Some killed by Hamas escaped the Nazis. Palestinians have lost their land and homes and have been hemmed into areas that can barely sustain life. 5.6 million Palestinians are registered with the UN as refugees, settled in Gaza, the West Bank of the River Jordan, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Some years ago, I visited Gaza with a Christian Aid trip. It was a place of desperation and hopelessness. Nothing makes what Hamas are doing acceptable or even understandable. But generations of Palestinians without hope make it possible.

So, we pray. And we do whatever we can to help in whatever ways might be open to us. We do so whilst continuing to pray and help as Ukraine and Russia fight on. We do so as famine, injustice, cruelty and despair stalk the lives of millions far away and on our doorsteps. More than one person has told me they no longer watch or listen to the news – it has become unbearable.

As I was writing this, Jill at Trinity-Henleaze passed on to me a message she had received about a global time of prayer. Allowing for different time zones, the suggestion is that across the nations we stop to pray for peace across the world for one synchronised minute every day. For this to happen at the same moment across the world, we in the UK need to do so at 3:00pm. It is a little thing, of course, in the face of the hurricanes of sadness and distress. But, along with everything else we might do by way of fundraising, campaigning, learning, listening, weeping and raging, here is a way to link our faith to the fate of the world. A little alarm on our phones perhaps? I’ve set mine.

Yours in Christ,

Neil