No one can take away the faith in our hearts


How long, O God? Will you forget me forever? (Psalm 13:1)

Earlier this week, I arrived in Lebanon from where MCC staff work with a dozen partner groups in Lebanon and Syria. It has been several years since staff has been able to work from Syria or even travel there, but we continue to support relief and peace building work in communities in both countries through partner organizations.

Lebanon has a total population of only 4.5 million people but hosts about 2 million refugees, primarily from Syria. You can imagine the enormous strain this has put on the infrastructure of this small country.

The director of our partner, Permanent Peace Movement (PPM), tells us that MCC was the first outside organization that understood what they were doing and supported them in building peace in Lebanon. Another partner, Popular Aid for Relief and Development (PARD), works in refugee settlements with women, children and families.

We visit a Syrian family in the Daouk settlement, a Palestinian gathering/neighborhood outside of the Palestinian refugee camp, who has been in Lebanon for three years. The father says he has four daughters and four sons and a number of these families are with them in this small three-room apartment. He tells me that, though he owned a large restaurant in Syria, the family left everything behind because he was only concerned about the safely of his children. He says “the future of his children has been lost because of the war in Syria.”  

Last evening, we met in Beirut with three bishops of the Syrian Orthodox Church, one of our main partners in Syria in Damascus and in the region of Homs, about 100 miles north of Damascus. Bishop Selwanos offers us thanks on behalf of the families of Homs who have been assisted by MCC after their town was mostly destroyed by the bombing. He tells us that MCC’s help over many years has made him view himself as partly Mennonite! Recent help from MCC has included heaters for use during the winter season, cash supplements and hygiene kits.      

Bishop Matta tells us about the situation in Damascus and about the thousands of families who have moved into his community because of the bombing in other parts of the country. He says, every day, the church has to process more than 150 baptismal certificates which are needed before people can migrate out of the country. He tells us that he wants his people to stay in Syria: “We love our country and if you want to help us, please help our people stay in Syria.”

I asked the Bishops whether, in the midst of the destruction and killing, they feel God has left them. Bishop Matta tells me that they have just one thing left – the mercy of God. He wonders whether maybe God hasn’t left them but whether the people have left God. He says that they have lost churches and schools and hospitals, and many people have been killed, but no one can take away the faith in their hearts.

This morning, as I read Psalm 13, I am challenged by the faith of these Bishops, holding fast to their faith in God, even through adversity. 

 Ron Byler is executive director of MCC U.S. He is in Sarajevo for two months and visiting MCC's programs in Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq and Ukraine from there.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

They welcomed us

Image
One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. (John 9:25) She was addicted to drugs for 20 years. She was in prison and her family broke apart. Her child was in an orphanage and her husband died. Because of her substance abuse, she eventually lost her one arm below her elbow. She saw no way out. She had hit the very bottom. When she came to know God, Natalia says everything changed. She found she had a deep desire to help people like herself and she discovered that her life experiences helped her understand others. “I remember what God did in my life and I have hope that God can touch other peoples’ lives and give them new life, too,” Natalia tells me. In Nikopol, Ukraine, she and Olga and Valodya, both of whom have similar stories to tell of their own, began New Life Charitable Fund a half dozen years ago to help people in prison, or who have drug or alcohol addictions, are HIV positive, homeless or for some other reason need a helping hand. Ukraine has ...
Read more

God multiplies our efforts

Image
Sister Zita at the La Posada shelter with baby Emmanuel and members of our border learning tour. Photo courtesy of Janae Rempel The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail. – I Kings 17:14 Ana Hinojosa remembers growing up on the Texas-Mexico border near Brownsville in the late 80s. Her family’s house was a mile from the border wall and she remembers the extended family gatherings in her back yard. Ana, an MCC immigration staff person, says border patrol agents would rest in the shade of the trees near the front of her house and, in the same day, it would be possible for a family from Mexico to knock on her front door to ask for food or directions. Her family turned no one away. Life on the border can look quite different today. When we enter the Catholic Charities respite center in McAllen, Texas, it is startling to see the contrast from the serenity of the neighborhood outside to the chaos inside. Cesar Matta tells us that, today, the cente...
Read more

A river of love

Image
For it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. – Matthew 25:40 “We are happy you are here to see this with your own eyes,” the leader of the Islamic Charities organization in Deir Attieh, Syria tells us, a group of MCC people visiting partner organizations in Syria. “We can’t express enough our heartfelt thanks to you.” Islamic Charities works with 3,000 at risk families affected by the war in the region and relies heavily on the work of volunteers. MCC provides food boxes to Islamic Charities as part of our humanitarian assistance in Syria. When I visit five families who received these food boxes, I recall the heartfelt thanks but feel mostly heart broken.    We visit two families living in a partially constructed apartment complex that stalled when the war began. The first family lives in a small two-room apartment, the mother and her five children and the woman’s father. Her husband is serving in the army. The second family inclu...
Read more