The Heart of God

I have not said a word about the raging conflict in the Middle East.

A few years ago Holy Spirit opened my eyes to something pertaining to that. I took a lot of slack over this.

God taught me about taking the sides and how it makes us partial.

When we prefer one, we lose our impartiality and it impacts our sight and interpretation of the events.

A terrible tragedy happened on October 7, 2023.

That goes without saying.

And yet, I have been wondering why have the hostages not been the primary task in the list. Why have they been second. I understand the enormity of the challenge. The hostages must be located and brought back. Also, it is not safe to wage the war on the turf of another. It is not safe to enter the tunnels which the kidnappers know as well as the back of their hand.

But there has been the other side. The side which Holy Spirit showed me.

The side which has made many in the Christian church lay down their knowledge of Christ, and harden their hearts to the degree where it seems almost justified that the entire nation has to pay for the sins of a few.

We have lost our sensitivity and grace when it comes to the Palestinian people.

There is a fine British MP who comes from centuries old Palestinian Christian family. Her family members have been sheltering at a church in Gaza.

A former US Congressman lost his Christian Orthodox family members after a strike at the church where they were sheltered. The bomb hit namely his family. They all died. Or, went to be with the Lord.

He said in X on Oct 23, 2023 the following: "In this video, provided to me by a relative on site, you can see the destruction at Saint Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza. The ancient sanctuary remains standing, but the church annex, which includes offices and meeting spaces for the Christian community, collapsed from an Israeli airstrike, killing multiple members of three connected Orthodox Christian families, who are my relatives. They are my dad’s first cousins and their spouses, children, and in-laws. May their memories be eternal."

We say, sorry, too bad, while we tell our conscience that they were a necessary casualty in a war between light and darkness.

Since we have automatically taken the side of another party who was violently wronged this time, and who has every right to go after their kidnapped people, the means tends to justify the end.

I watched yesterday a fine and anointed church service in London, and the speaker felt inspired to address the multiple demonstrations in London.

He addressed it as if they were all Palestinan people, and his words came from a right place, from the goodness of his heart.

He prayed that God would touch them and give them the revelation of Christ.

But the thing is that they are not all the Palestinian people protesting in the streets.

There have been the protests where Jewish people took over a London Rail Station. They are not pro-Hamas. They are protesting against the cruelty which has left the Palestinian civilians without water, subject to indiscriminate bombing.

And yes, this is war.

But who of us would imagine a scenario in our Western world where the entire nation would be punished for the sins of a few.

This does not come from the heart of God, no matter how we may try to put it.

There are always evil people in the midst of us.

Does it mean that the entire population of London, or New York should be taken out and bombed to smithereens because of the evil people terrorising the people in these cities.

Of course not. Such idea would be unacceptable in the civilised world.

We would not deny innocent civilians water and food and light and communications. How long does a human go without any water?

It is a pathway to a slow death.

This is what the protests have been about.

Yes, there are always some extremists with their own agendas who have crept in there. But we do not punish the rest of the people for their trespasses and misdeeds.

Yet when it comes to the Palestinians, especially in Gaza, even the ones from our family of faith, we tend to measure them with different scales.

This has opened us up to immeasurable cruelty.

Some have gone even as far as the Israeli PM Netanyahu who likened the Palestinians in Gaza to the Old Testament Amaleks "who had to be taken out", for this was the command of God.

This is radical and political, and while we should not be ignorant of the happenings around us, and if God calls us, work also in the political scene, we are not called to mix politics with our faith, preaching it actively from our pulpits.

Yet, this is what too many of us unfortunately do.

Our faith should be unadulterated and pure.

Our heart should reflect the heart of God which He demonstrated to us in Jesus.

There is no other way. The God we believe, He paid the price of redemption for the entire mankind, and there is no differece between a Jew or a Greek, or.....a Palestinian life.