Day 23: Heartbreaking

I am reading a series of books called the Zion Chronicles right now about a group of Zionists during Partition in Israel in the middle of the 20th Century. The first book, which I finished today, was incredible. Bodie and Brock Thoene are incredible writers, and God knows I love a good fiction, but these books are different. These are historical fictions. So while the characters and the adventures are usually fiction, the setting and the time line are set in real history. There is something about knowing that these events are real that effects me more deeply as I read.

There is something about reading of the human suffering and pain, and maneuvering my imagination through real events and nightmares that stirs my heart differently. I have always been a soppy reader and movie watcher. I get easily invested into the characters and swept away in the story... but then it is over and I go on. But when I am reading about the characters in The Gates of Zion dealing with the emotions and hardships of the Ben Yehuda Street bombing of the 1940s, and I know that it is not a well thought out twist to the plot but a reality, I can't just remove it from me after the page turns. And my heart aches for those things that happened...

My eternal curiosity caused me to look up the bombing, to try and find photographs like the ones described in the book. What I found broke my heart. Not only were there plenty of pictures from the bombing, with men scrambling through the devastated ruins of their city searching for survivors, but there were pictures of bombings throughout the last fifty years. Two suicide bombers killed over a dozen innocent people in 2001. Pictures of the covered bodies of those that lost their lives to some angry cause and pictures of dazed, innocent survivors are scattered all over the internet. In articles, in blogs, on websites...

One article lead me to another to another, until I was reading personal accounts of the Gaza war from people on the front lines. Some of the accounts are so full of hope, some are not. Some are filled with God, some are just angry... Oh, it must break your heart Papa... It must... It breaks mine.

I pray for peace there... I pray that You are with Israel in their suffering... I pray You deliver them from the hands of their enemies... I pray for the love of Christ to infiltrate all sides... I pray for love, peace, grace, mercy... I pray...