Letting my leaves fall: Israel One

In the next several days I'd love to chronicle my trip to Israel with some thoughts and ideas I hope solidify the experience and the place for people who haven't been yet.  

Maybe one day, in your half awake stupor, you sat clicking through thousands of channels at 4am.  You perchance happened to come across a C-SPAN type viewing of British Parliment.

It's actually kind of hilarious.

They yell their opinions of everything, no matter who's talking.  The Prime Minister could be giving his version of "The State of the Union" address and you'd hear dozens of old politicians mumbling and sometimes yelling at him.  The speaker usually raises his voice to talk over them, but occassionally the sassier ones will respond to the jeers in amazingly sarcastic dry British wit.

My first view of Israel

I put that idea in your head obviously for a reason.

It can be tough preaching a message to people who don't want to hear it.

I traveled to Israel with a number of pre-conceived notions and while I was there they one by one fell to the ground, like leaves from my tree of "Western thinking."

I grew up through the 90's watching "peace in the middle east" develop as sort of a catch phrase.  People would hold up their "peace" hand signals and we'd feel proud watching two enemies shake hands standing next to one of our more famous American politicians.

And then it all would fall to disaster.

Watching the same cycle repeat leads one to wonder, what the heck?  Why isn't anything working?

Here's where my thinking was flawed.  I believed, maybe like many others in the US, that peace is being fought for by something like 99% of the people.  We've got a radical 1% (on both sides) and a vast majority clamoring for all hostilities to cease.
That entire vision is entirely wrong, and that idea is one of the leaves that need to drop from my tree.

There are pro-Palestinians who are convicted to fight, and their are pro-Israelis who are convicted to fight, and neither one is interested in peace, if it means surrendering the core of their goals.

We are staring at a broken marriage saying "I'll do whatever I have to do to make sure you stay together." and both husband and wife are already sold on divorce.

To achieve peace you have to convince at least one side that peace is preferable to the alternative.

Right now, to both sides, peace means giving up something they're not willing to give up.

We've got a nastier version of British Parliment going on here, speaking a message to an audience who isn't interested in said message.

And when you think about it, Jesus had the same struggle.  His message of peace was spoken to Jews who were ready to take up torches and swords and overthrow Roman oppression.  I mean, imagine Jesus saying "blessed are the peacemakers" to a group of people who are hoping he's a military leader who's going to instigate the gorilla campaign that will win them back their land?

You can bet a bunch of them were kind of bummed to hear that phrase.

Jesus even says "My peace I give to you."  to his disciples in John 14.  He says "my peace" to indicate it's not an idea, "hey guys peace would be great" it's an essential part of living like him.  "I do peace, so you do peace"

Praying for peace in the middle east won't work because the people there don't want it.  Just my idea, but any prayers directed for that area, (and you should be praying for that part of the world) should be for transformation.

Transformation of hearts and minds, because "My peace I give to you" is the only peace that will survive, and thrive, in that land.