Imagine that your parish is in the centre of a city of 200,000 people, 199,000 of them Muslim. Imagine that your parish is in a city that has been surrounded by military checkpoints for the last six or seven years and that to enter or leave your city involved waits of hours or days..or month...or years. Imagine that the streets you walk each day are the haunt of angry young men with access to guns. Imagine that many nights, you wake to the sound of tanks and jeeps rumbling past your house - or even worse the souns of gunfire. Imagine that you live in Nablus and are part of the remant Christian Arab population. You as an Anglican are a minority within a minority within a minority.What would you do?
If you are the Anglican Church in Nablus, you seek to build God's Kingdom by every means open to you. You say to the population through actions and words that you are here to stay. You keep your hospital open to serve the poor. You open a new church building to proclaim that God is faithful and that this is your home. The Rev. Hosam Naoum has led the church in Nablus right rhough the terrors of the second Intifada and declares that the Gospel is the hope of the nations. He sees a new church building as a sign of the indestructibility of the Church. It means that the new life in Christ is continuing: and it means new hope for the Christian Arabs who see themselves as living sones of the Holy Land.
Great courage and faith is being displayed by our Christian Arab friends in the Palestine territories. In the face of such extreme conditions day after day, we need to look away from our own local lives and embrace in prayer those who are tested daily and retain their strong trust in God.
Pray for them
Blodwyn
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