One Sure Hope

Yesterday, a Palestinian gunman murdered eight Jewish seminary students.  Many more are wounded.  A neighbor to the Seminary killed the gunman.

As is the case whenever innocents are targeted, this is a deplorable, despicable and barbaric act, and those are just a few of the words that come to mind.  For those of us who live and work among Palestinians this act serves to discourage us to the point of wanting to throw up our hands and just give up.  The celebrations in Gaza only intensify these urgings.

What hope is there for any change?

Only one, but that one hope is our sure hope, our only hope, I think.  The hope of the world is Jesus.  This we believe.  This we profess.  This one sure hope is what we cling to during days like today.  It is all we have, really, but it is enough.  It is enough.

The Palestinian Christian community will not be celebrating these killings.  The Palestinian Christian community will be praying for the families of the victims, as well as for the family of the man who chose this course rather than the path less traveled here – the path of nonviolence and reconciliation.

The longer that Sally and I are here, the stronger our belief that the message of Jesus, along with his faithful walk to the cross, and God’s fierce response of resurrection, are the reasons we must not - indeed cannot - throw up our hands and quit.  Rather we must continue to live lives that offer an alternative to violence, and we must continue to tell the story of Jesus to our neighbors and anyone else who will listen.

The story of Jesus is the only story that offers an ending that is not bathed in blood.  The story of Jesus is the story of one man, one righteous man, willing to shed his blood for the redemption of the whole world.  This one man, this one Son of God, is our hope – Sally’s and mine – but far greater than just that, this one man, is the hope of all humankind.

It is enough.