Letter
from a Syrian Pastor
It was much unexpected turmoil. Not even in our wildest dreams did we imagine the violence that is sweeping across the country now. For
many years Syria enjoyed peace and stability in the heart of the unstable Middle East. We were a safe haven for our neighbors. We received displaced people and refugees from other countries like Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, and even from Somalia and other far away areas. Yet now the violence pushed the host people out of their homes,
fleeing for their lives. Many are displaced internally and many others are external refugees living in the most humiliating circumstances, deprived of even shelter, clean water, power, food, and medical care. Millions are not sleeping in their own beds, forced out of their homes to find themselves with their children homeless and living in public parks or in the wilderness. Others are not sure if they or their children and loved ones will see the light of a new day, tens of thousands of families lost loved ones: a child, a father, a mother, or a husband. Hundreds of the injured died for lack of medical care. Thousands of children go to bed terrified of the sound of shelling.
Hundreds of thousands are in camps in neighboring countries. My people are hurting. I can cry like Nehemiah because the walls of our cities are burnt and the people in great trouble and disgrace, I can weep like Jeremiah because of the intensity and the spread of evil, I can mourn like David because of the indiscriminate brutal killing of innocent people, children, women, elderly, youth subject to shelling or under the rubble of their homes. Neither fighting party is the true mother of this child, this country. Their worship of the idol of power and their desire to win is too cruel to care for the child they claim that they are fighting for. Innocent people are paying the heavy toll of this evil. It is gloomy, sad and painful. The only good news is that the church is moving whole-heartedly to
help relieve some of the suffering, and the Lord is surely opening hearts to receive the gospel.
Excerpted from the article We mustn’t give up on Christians in Syria on the God and Politics UK website.
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