May 5, 2011

May 5, 2011 Amman

The morning started off with a strong devotional time. The night before I was reading in Lightforce about Palestinian Christians, and how large numbers of Palestinians fled after the Irgun massacred 243 Arabs in the village of Deir Yassin, men, women and children, then took a few men as survivors to other villages to relate what the Irgun had done before then killing them as well. http://www.deiryassin.org/mas.html And of course, the West Bank has been under Israeli control since the 1967 war and has experienced two infitadas in which rubber bullets which can easily cause spinal injury and death, especially when used on young boys. This is part of the background of some of the Christians we had met the night before and would attend the conference. I shared what I had read and my own thoughts of how insignificant my testimony must seem in the light of such hardship, especially since many of my own difficulties were of my own making, not forced on me in my home by an occupying force.

Wahid in his unique comforting way reminded us of Romans, where Paul speaks of how when see abounds the more, so does the grace of God, and Angela added that it is not about our individual content, but about the process, that each of our stories is different but the common denominator is God’s healing power. It is comforting to know that regardless of our personal circumstances, God’s grace always proves sufficient to the believer who turns to Him when in suffering and tough circumstance, whether of his own making or not.

Wahid also shared with Larry architectural plans for a leadership training conference center he dreams of building just outside of Alexandria. You could see the excitement in Larry’s eyes. He is eager to come up with a development plan and I could see just how God has prepared him for just such a task

The conference started that afternoon. Rand was a bit disappointed in the turnout; he says there are so many conferences in Amman, even though this one is different, that the small numbers of Christians in Jordan are simply worn out by them. Still there is a strong contingent from the West Bank, Jerusalem, even as far away as Tel Aviv. In a way the smaller numbers have the advantage of more personal time with the people in our small groups. I renewed some friendships from Syria, particularly Adham, who could not attend anything but the opening session due to a youth retreat he was facilitating that weekend. He was quite kind to lend me his classical guitar for the weekend. Having the guitar was to bea simple pleasure. keeping my callouses from fading any further from non-use, but any thoughts I had harbored of playing for anyone was soon to be tossed aside as my sore throat was fixing to take a sharp turn south.