Remorse without repentance is empty

9:11 “All Israel has broken 25 your law and turned away by not obeying you. 26 Therefore you have poured out on us the judgment solemnly threatened 27 in the law of Moses the servant of God, for we have sinned against you. 28 9:12 He has carried out his threats 29 against us and our rulers 30 who were over 31 us by bringing great calamity on us – what has happened to Jerusalem has never been equaled under all heaven! 9:13 Just as it is written in the law of Moses, so all this calamity has come on us. Still we have not tried to pacify 32 the LORD our God by turning back from our sin and by seeking wisdom 33 from your reliable moral standards. 34 9:14 The LORD was mindful of the calamity, and he brought it on us. For the LORD our God is just 35 in all he has done, 36 and we have not obeyed him. 37 (Daniel 9:11-14)

A couple of weeks ago I watched a movie in BRNG about Palestine called the Gaza Strip. It showed life there through the eyes of a boy, whose father was in prison and whose mother was unable to work, so he was forced to leave school and sell newspapers for a living. To say that it was a one-sided documentary is an understatement, as there was not even an attempt to explain why Israel does what it does, only what (they do). Nevertheless, no matter which side your sympathies lay, it was heartbreaking to see the violence and death they face every day of their lives. But it also did get me thinking, especially after heated discussions with my roommate, about what God's will truly is for the region. Jesus did not die for the Jew alone, but for everyone. As Christians we should not forget this, but continue to support Israel's right to exist as God's chosen people. However, the tragedy is that if Israel did not retaliate the way that it does, it would be wiped off the map. Almost never does the media show the fact that Israel treats its Palestinian population (which is more than twice its size, at 1.2 million) just as, if not more so, democratically than we do our citizens. It is only because suicide bombers have made it a necessity for them to displace many Palestinians away from their homes, such as when they built the wall around the Gaza Strip several summers ago.

My roommate also brought up an interesting point of how we can justify saying that the land belongs to Israel, when I told him that it belonged to the Jews almost 2000 years ago, before they were forced to leave by the Roman empire. By that same argument then, the Native Americans have the right to remove us, since this land did not belong to us either. The sad thing is that this land we have was stolen by Christians, when many believed they were doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord. What is important for us to remember is that in choosing Israel as His people, God was saying "I show mercy and favor to those the world rejects; you who are slaves and abused by the world, I will take in and call my 'special people'. In remembering this we see that it is not our inheritance or color of our skin that makes us special, it is that we are strangers in this place. This keeps our hearts near those less fortunate, for they too, are all God's 'special people'. More on this later, methinks!