Depoliticizing

As I sat in an apartment on the Upper East Side of New York City last weekend, I began to understand that I need a new approach as I unravel this past year. With Gaza reeling in the aftermath of war, I would be seething in anger at moments, but proud to hold back emotion at others. Something was clearly wrong and I had been praying for a breakthrough. Two have come.


The first was a sermon by R.J. (a FOCUS alum) in his house-church in NYC. As he spoke on suffering, I realized that I need boldness to step into the depths of the pain I saw and take off much of the Palestinian versus Israeli lens which has clouded my vision, and see how Christ speaks to the human suffering I saw and experienced. Easier said than done. However, this encouragement was vital. It is the way out.


Secondly, I'm befriending an Israeli. She's stood at interesting crossroads and lives a story of redemption. Born in communist U.S.S.R., lived in Israel; a Jew, became a Christian at Yale, now Eastern Orthodox. She entered the threshold of my homegroup two weeks ago and I held back a gasp - one of relief that at present someone in the room could understand eastern orthodoxy (a road my family is traveling), and secondly that God could coordinate something so ghastly ironic. This homegroup - such a place of healing for me from my experiences abroad now embraces someone who's political persuasion deep down contains something vastly different from my own.
It seems that God is teaching me something.

None of this is easy, but if I am to take the words of Scripture seriously, the words which say of Christ, he was "a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering," (Is 53:3) - then I know I am steered rightly, and I will learn much by traveling this way.