IT’S ALMOST NEW Year’s, a prospect as daunting as it is exciting. I don’t exactly know what I’m going to do in ‘24, but note the emphasis will be on doing. I know what’s right and I intend to continue doing what’s right, wherever that leads. What I won’t do is just continue to play along. Playing along to the sinister narrative is like listening to Black Sabbath to believe in God.
Nope, won’t do it.
On Boxing Day (the day after Christmas in Canada), I reached out to a close friend who lives in the Occupied Territories/West Bank. This is the under-reported, other front in the Israeli campaign to erase and memory-hole Palestinians from the land they’ve called home at least since the Roman Empire. Like all indigenous Holy Land Christians, my friend and his family are direct descendants of those first believers brought into the fold of Jesus Christ by the Apostles.
Pretty special.
Like all Palestinians, my friend has a heart for his homeland bigger than politics and the artificial yet lethally enforced claims of their vicious oppressor, and like most Gazans, the people of the Olive possess no weapons to speak of to defend themselves against their brutal Occupiers other than righteous claims of origin and belonging, and of course prayer.
In tandem, as in because Palestinians can offer only feeble resistance, it isn’t a coincidence that Israel loves nothing more than loosing its war machine against them. Moreover, the Gaza genocidal spectacle has become a theatre of carnage tied closely to the practical implementation of newly developed Israeli-made weapons that will be sold - with 'proof of concept' bona fides attached, no less - to other thug regimes and eager shoppers looking to embark on their own home-style purges.
(Without the fear of election uncertainties (spoiler alert: all elections are rigged) or being held accountable by the World Court or other nations, leaders no longer have any incentive to hold back on their worst impulses; which is to tell you that these bastards are and were always all about their worst impulses. It’s full-speed-ahead now, and I believe you can expect similar top-down horrors, branching out as they say, in the coming year.)
As for my contacts in the Occupied Territories who feel they're next in line for the Gaza treatment, they’re already experiencing the same asphyxiation of water, food, electricity, and freedom to travel, that preceded the Gaza bombardment and invasion. There are no deliveries of foodstuffs and living essentials to towns and villages away from city centers anymore. Residents, refugees in their own country, must travel to Ramallah (a 20-minute drive that takes 3 hours now full circle thanks to endless military stops, checkpoints, and harassment) to pay prices they can't afford to barely feed their families; a dangerous journey fraught with the anxiety of an ever-present Israeli certainty: the unexpected.
My friend believes the end is coming, but he won't leave. He explains: 'This is my home. We have done nothing to them but to exist. They have stolen everything from us and that is still not enough. But I won't go. I guess they will have to kill me.'
You have to have lived in Palestine as I have to understand that Palestinians will not do the world's bidding and go the way of other diasporas. These are warriors without weapons, largely, who have gone through and are going through something like H3ll. And unlike the voracious wolves at their door, for Christians and Muslims alike, all the suffering sustained by their people over generations only reinforces what it means to be Palestinian.
This is the only way I know how to say it:
The same life we waste on trivial indulgences is to them so precious as to embrace something actually worth dying for.
The principle of the thing.
I’VE JUST FINISHED my 6th micro-video essay titled, ‘Become Nineveh.’ I will release it tomorrow on New Year’s Day. I feel so blessed, that despite a lonely Christmas (the children were largely no-shows) and the typical problems associated with little income and rising prices, God has somehow given me a way to continue to live and love without any loss of zeal for His Kingdom, despite everything.
I don’t disparage the mystery of the fragile boat in choppy waters having learned from Jesus that all is actually okay as long as He’s aboard. In fact, recent reflections bring me back to my childhood as though it were yesterday, and the slowly dawning spiritual clarity even then that things were never going to end up anywhere but here, and that like you, I was made for this time.
There is no doubt now. None at all.
I’M GOING TO try and explain to you in the next video and those following, the spiritual landscape I feel called to address and comment on. The next one acts as a pivot of sorts, moving us from where we are to where we need to go, and how to get there (hopefully). Interesting how in numerical order, the 7th, what I’ve tentatively titled ‘Finding God,’ follows the 6th, ‘Become Nineveh.’ The sixth speaks to the plight of humanity; the seventh to the Kingdom Order being symbolic of spiritual perfection. And no, this is not a pimp for divinatory practices, but a simple commentary on the wonder and majesty of God, Who relates to us in every way conceivable.
Wishing you a very Happy New Year, and the fervor to set aside our pet sins and chronic dithering, and put on the armor of God.
2024 is going to be a water slide.
With you in Him,
JMDA
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