Over 2700 years ago, the Prophet Isaiah recorded a time when an oppressive darkness swallowed his land. At that time, the Assyrian king, Tiglath-Pileser III, had conquered the northern tribes of Israel and taken many into exile. Judah and its capital, Jerusalem, had survived after making a preemptive treaty with Assyria.

We are all witnesses to a seismic moment in modern history. It is being called the greatest refugee crisis since World War II as hordes of desperate men, women, and children from lands of chaos and conflict seek safety and hope in Europe. The news over the past weeks has been dominated by apocalyptic scenes of crowds swarming razor wire fences and overwhelmed police trying to contain the tens of thousands.

Recently, two famous churches on two different continents were attacked within hours, or possibly even minutes, of each other. One attack was against the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, a historic African American church. On Wednesday evening, June 17th, Dylann Roof entered the church joining a Bible study for about an hour before opening fire around 9 p.m. killing nine people.

Last week, Israel celebrated its birth. Following the Jewish calendar, on the 5th of Iyyar, 67 years ago in Tel Aviv, David Ben Gurion and the Jewish National Council declared the establishment of the modern Jewish state. Yet, before every birth, there are labor pangs, and before those travails a fetus has slowly developed in the wake of conception. The modern state of Israel’s birth was much more than one miraculous day.

In his response about the greatest commandment, Jesus quoted from the book of Deuteronomy, and more specifically, a passage of scripture known as the “Shma” within Jewish tradition.[1] Dt 6:4-5 is a command to the people of Israel to follow God’s Law completely and unequivocally. This call to obedience is curiously phrased as “love.” How can one command love? Who can command that love?

A group of three families, which included seven children six years old and under, went to Jordan Nov 15-16 to visit with Syrian and Iraqi refugees. The three families were JCF’s Eva and Danny Kopp, my family, and the Nazarene Church’s Shahade and Annabelle Twal. My wife, Sharon, had an impression that we should go as families, along with our young children, for two main reasons. One purpose was so that we as families could connect with their families on the most basic level—as fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, the Turkish Ottoman Empire had ruled much of what we call the Middle East for 400 years. With the defeat of the Central Powers, which included the Turks, the Ottoman Empire was carved up by the victorious Allied Powers.

The Jewish New Year, Rosh haShanah, begins this Wednesday night, Sept 24th. In Jewish tradition, it is a time of spiritual introspection, for accounting of one’s relationship with God and others —forgiving and being forgiven. Two central images of this holiday are the blowing of a shofar (ram’s horn) and the Book of Life.

This has not been a summer of fun for many around the world. Even though most entered this summer’s break as a time of vacation, the citizens of the world were constantly reminded of the suffering of others by a seemingly constant barrage of bad news on the internet.

This past month, on the evening of June 12th, three Israeli teenagers, Naftali Frenkel (16), Gilad Shaer (16), and Eyal Yifrah (19), were kidnapped by Palestinians with links to Hamas, while hitchhiking home from the West Bank area near Bethlehem. Over the next three weeks, Israel was gripped with nerve-racking emotion, while authorities began a massive hunt for the boys around the West Bank.

Pope Francis recently traveled to Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories (May 24-26th). Jerusalem, in particular, came to a standstill during his pilgrimage. The papal visit was intensely watched around the world, especially by the media, for any sign of his political leanings regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.