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Many of you responded to the last post with beautiful thoughts – thank you!  We included several of your ideas below and will have another post including the others!  If you have more ideas for this list –  Please share! Local, national and global. Do more than just read (or talk, or worry) about what is going on –  lift these events and the people impacted by them up in prayer

What I wasn’t prepared for was feeling called out on the reality of my privilege so quickly…coming face to face with the full depth of disparity that exists in our world. And the questions were unrelenting: I don’t know about you, but for me, asking these questions can be draining and depressing. Not living life complacently, but seeking every opportunity to live out God’s call to love in an unjust world – showing love by what we prioritize, how we live, who we spend our time with, what we pray for and even how we spend our money? We are still very much figuring out what this looks like for us but stay tuned for our next post where we’ll share 5 simple ideas to pursue being present, aware, engaged, challenged, seeking, and willing to live in the tension.

He has been working in the region for the past 4+ years with time in Syria, Turkey and Lebanon – where he currently works and lives with his wife (also working in humanitarian relief). I reached out to him to ask a few questions ahead of hosting Syrian violinist and peace activist Mariela Shaker (amazing evening Saturday if you missed it! ). The questions with his responses are below (he asks that you read them as non-cynically as possible), and will hopefully shed some helpful light on the situation from his first-person viewpoint and encourage us all to see how we can be involved in helping from back home. Another idea of how to take action is by reading and signing this petition created by the United Nations Refugee Agency to encourage decision makers around the world to act in 2018 with solidarity and shared responsibility.

Over the next year, similar sentiments of injustice would fuel protests and calls for revolution in nearly every country in North Africa and the Mid-East, including Algeria, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Yemen, Somalia, Kuwait, and Djibouti. The situation in Syria in particular has become a global proxy war, with Russia, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Great Britain, ISIS, Turkey, and the U. S. all actively deploying soldiers and weapons in the conflict. So as we navigate these hard questions we again look to the life of Jesus; peacemaker, shepherd and servant to show us what our response can be,  what it can look and sound like. This step shows your willingness to engage on these difficult questions that face our world, your support for peace in Syria, your openness to learn about the conflict, and to look for opportunities to support those that have suffered because of the war.