Near Bethlehem Bible College, where I was teaching a year ago, the “separation wall” is thick with graffiti registering anger, frustration, and yearning. Almost daily I walked down Star Street in Bethlehem to the Church of the Nativity to pray for justice and peace in a land with so much suffering. Visits to the manger…
Category: West Bank
(Corrected) Christmas is canceled in Bethlehem this year
(For those of you who get to this blog by an email notice, I am resending this story. The link in the first version I sent out did not work. Sorry!) Christmas is canceled in Bethlehem this year. Take a few minutes to hear Palestinian Christian voices from Bethlehem and Jerusalem this Advent season. During…
Christmas is cancelled in Bethlehem this year
Christmas is canceled in Bethlehem this year. Normally that would sound like the beginning of a joke, but this year it is deadly serious. During the academic year 2022-23 I had the privilege of being a visiting scholar at Bethlehem Bible College where Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac is academic dean. He also is the senior…
Painful paradox in Palestine
Jerusalem is in the midst of Sukkot, the seven-day Festival of Booths (Lev. 23:39–43). It’s one of three festivals for which the Torah says God’s people should come to the Holy City. Sukkot is both a harvest event and a time to remember God’s faithfulness when Israelites were vulnerable in the wilderness. People celebrating Sukkot…
Did Jesus help build Sepphoris?
Just four miles from Nazareth where Jesus grew up, I pause among ruins of a Muslim cemetery next to a hill where historians say he may have found employment as a youth. On this hill stood the ancient city of Sepphoris, which eventually became the modern Palestinian town of Saffurriya. Communities on this hill were…
Let the Bridegroom come!
Palestinian weddings can last for a week, as family and friends revel through rounds of anticipatory parties. When it’s finally time for vows, men convene at the groom’s home for one last celebration before leading him away to make promises. I came upon a wedding in the West Bank north of Jerusalem at just such…
Respect for both Jews and Palestinians
“At that time the Canaanites were in the land.” With that casual aside, the biblical account of Abraham and Sarah arriving in Canaan states that the territory already was populated. “To your offspring I will give this land,” God told Abraham (Gen. 12). Today near the northern border of modern Israel there’s a mud-brick Canaanite…
Letting the other guy win
With wars festering in many countries, and continuing conflict over land in the West Bank, I pray that political leaders might have the reconciling spirit of Abraham. Shortly after returning to Canaan from Egypt, Abraham found himself in conflict with his nephew Lot over access to grazing (Genesis 13). Abraham was rich, and as…
Holy Lands Peace Pilgrim 