Traveling On
Five weeks of bombing between Lebanese Hezbollah and the State of Israel ended in a fragile ceasefire last week that seems to be holding itself together. Since the ceasefire began on August 14, passages have been opening for delivery of humanitarian aid denied the 750,000 people World Vision estimates were displaced by the conflict. Many of these people left with minimal food, water and clothing, and when they return their homes may be destroyed. World Vision also indicates that initial relief efforts are directed toward immediate physical needs for water, hygiene kits and food. Next will follow expansion of child-focused programming and protection, including psychosocial activities and child-friendly spaces. UNICEF estimates that one-third of the people killed were children and that one-half of the displaced in Lebanon are children. Meanwhile, recent missile attacks in Gaza have left one million people without electricity and water. Food shortages are just around the corner.
News of the ceasefire reached me while I was on vacation in the Southwestern United States admiring God's handiwork at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It's an interesting place, rather peaceful and serene, simply because its majesty is too enormous to grasp, no matter how long or how much you try. What was very clear, though, and easy to discern, were the many languages spoken at the Canyon's edge that day. Japanese, German, French, Spanish and Italian all mingled in the air like a European audio masterpiece. Interesting too that what lies within U.S. borders really belongs to the whole world. Perhaps that sense of global community is what kept bringing my mind back to what the Lebanese and Israeli people had suffered over the past month. Air raids, bombings, and scurrying back and forth between homes and shelters seeking safe haven for themselves and their families. Businesses unable to open, a severely-damaged economy in a Beirut finally recovering from twenty years of civil war. People dead and property destroyed because armed conflict is not an exact science. Many, many people suffering needlessly.
On my flight home I was reminded again that this fire dance between Israel and Lebanon, which the world watched and fretted over from a distance, was lived out in real lives. A gentleman on my flight was on the first leg of his journey home to Haifa. We only spoke briefly. I expressed my sadness for both countries, but also my desire to visit Israel at some point in the future. He assured me it was a safe, beautiful country, and easy to travel through under normal circumstances. We also spoke about how it is the extremists in each culture that seem to put pressure on the world to take notice through fear and violence. Our conversation ended on the concern that each new event of international unrest raises: we don't know what the long-term effects will be on the children displaced from their homes and those displaced from their sense of safety and peace. My traveling companion said his country has estimated that twenty percent of the children affected by this struggle would not recover fully, even with appropriate care and counseling. Deep sadness filled these words that expressed a legacy for the next generation to work through in their own time and way.
We each carry a part of the landscape of this legacy in our own souls, one after another, as we decide how our belief in God weaves its way through our lives and into the next generation. We hear a good bit about mega-churches, yet crave the small, still voice in our lives that means God knows us individually and intimately. We talk of evangelizing the unchurched "so they may know the abundance of God's grace and the joy of salvation through Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior," but don't communicate very well among ourselves about what that means for getting along with our neighbors, applying our faith at work or making positive, meaningful contributions to our communities. Believing in God is something many people say, but most of us aren't sure how to do, so we don't. We may go to church, take our children to Sunday School and tithe, plus ten percent more. But could we define that which we say is what we believe for our children, if they asked, in practical, livable terms?
My guess is that for most people the answer would be no. What mostly would be drawn out of the Belief Survival Kit Manuel would be catalogue copy reminiscent of the brochures from the Grand Canyon: beautiful, somewhat accurate, but not very embodied. But something about that tourist ad copy may prevail. Every piece of information I read said to bring a camera, take lots of pictures, and not to expect them to match the experience of standing at the rim of the Canyon itself. Everyone must see the Canyon for themselves.
Perhaps we need to find our own ways to pass this most important legacy on to the next generation. We live in a shared world of experience, but we each have an individual perspective and a unique relationship with God. It is an important legacy, this working out of our own salvation. We must be sure to pass it on.