Thinking out loud

    Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace. I am for peace; but when I speak, they are for war. – Psalm 120:6,7 Hebron is just an hour from Jerusalem by the settler roads. It is a holy space for Muslims, Christians and Jews. Abraham and Sarah, patriarch and matriarch of the faith, are said to be buried here. It is difficult to comprehend what is happening in the West Bank in Palestine. Since the 1967 war, the West Bank is Occupied by Israel. On the road to Hebron we see a number of Israeli settlements. Gates mark the entrances to Palestinian villages. The gates can be locked at a moment’s notice by the Israeli military. In Hebron, illegal Israeli settlements are here, too. Our guide, Abdullah, leads us through a part of the city near the burial place of Abraham and Sarah that almost looks abandoned. Palestinian shops on the ground level have long since been shut down because Israeli settlers have moved into the top floors of...

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck . . . I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God. – Psalm 69:1-3 Ayman is a university professor in Palestine and a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. I am talking to him while we are sitting under an awning with his extended family, overlooking the bypass road in the West Bank village of Al Walajah. Land for the road was taken from his family and other Palestinian families and only Israelis can use the road, not Palestinians. Just up the hill from the family home is the 26-foot-high cement separation wall. From the winding path the wall follows, it is clear the wall is meant for more than security. The wall separates Palestinians from their land and it protects natural resources like water for use by the Israelis. Sandwiched between the wall and the bypass road for Israeli settlers, Ayman’s family is barely able to survive on th...

On that day the deaf shall hear the words of a scroll, and out of their gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see.     - Isaiah 29:18 More than 150 students are enrolled at the Holy Land Institute for the Deaf in Amman, Jordan. Brother Andrew says the Institute works with 60 partners in the region to locate people who are sensory impaired or who are multi-disabled. Nadia (with Brother Andrew above) was deaf and became blind at age 20. At the institute, she has become a substitute mother for many of the small children. In addition to its work with students, the institute provides teacher and technician training for others who work with the 15-20,000 people who are deaf in Jordan. The institute trains sign language interpreters at the university and is in the process of publishing a sign language dictionary as part of celebrating its 50 th anniversary. Recently, Brother Andrew has caught a vision for taking the institut...