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January 2, 2001
Dear Friends in Christ,
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
As I write, it is still the Christmas season, as many churches
in the Middle East will not celebrate the birth of Christ until
January 6. And yet, it should still be Christmas for all of us,
as the message of Christmas—peace, hope, love, justice, forgiveness,
salvation—is an eternal message that ought to be experienced
in our lives every day, so that the reality of Jesus’s birth
is not a memory but a continuous event. As such, God will have
to be visiting us always and Jesus will have to born in our lives
continuously. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening.
It looks to me as if He stopped visiting us, or, perhaps, that
we have prevented Him from wanting to be reborn in our lives.
What happened? Did He depart from our planet or from our region
because we prevented His reincarnation in our lives?
As I look back over 2000, I seem to see only suffering and misery,
war and injustices, homeless and refugee peoples—especially
in the Middle East—so where is the good news of Christmas
to bring to the people of the Middle East? Bad news is an old
story in the Middle East, and we hear it again through the war
in Palestine/Israel, the inhumane sanctions upon Iraq, the unstable
situation in south Lebanon, and the aggression of the fundamentalists
in Egypt, north Africa and other parts of the region. Throughout
so much of the region there is a bad economy causing millions
of people to suffer from poor nutrition and insufficient health
care, and the youth are left with no sense of hope for the future.
And we always tend to ask the question "What is happening?"
and not "Why is this happening?"
From every country I can tell you dozens of stories. I am sure
you all still remember the story of Mohammed, the nine-year-old
boy who was shot by the Israelis solder in his fathers arm, but
you don’t know the story of many more like him who also were
killed: Imad and Samer in Ramallah, Ali and Adnan in Nablus, Fathi
and Khalid in Gaza, and so on.
Another story comes from Basrah, in southern Iraq. It is the
story of Amal, a nine-year-old girl whose name means "hope"
in Arabic. I met Amal in the fall of 1999, when on a Saturday
morning at 7:00, I was walking near the harbor, across from the
Basrah Sheraton Hotel. Amal came over to try to sell me some chewing
gum and biscuits. We began talking and she told me that she came
from a family of seven. Her father, Sami, was paralyzed by American
air raid a year ago and he cannot work much, and although the
mother worked as a cleaning women and made tea in a government
office, all of the children had to help to earn money to support
the family. So every morning she came to this spot to sell chewing
gum to the people in the hotel, but many times the hotel guards
chased her away. At 9:00 they left for school but returned again
from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. to try again to make a little money. The
other brothers and sisters did the same nearby, or at the port.
As we approached the gate to the hotel, the guard saw Amal talking
to me and he started shouting and chasing her. I tried to talk
with him, but he would not listen and yelled "bad girl, shame
on you!" Amal disappeared with the other children who are
forced by circumstances to do the same, begging in the street
and selling little things. This is the plight of thousands of
children all over Iraq.
This past November I returned to Iraq as part of a delegation
from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). While we were in Basrah,
I returned to look for Amal and asked some children if they knew
her. One of them told me that Amal was sick and left with a wondering
look in his eyes, not forgetting to ask me for some money.
Back at my hotel, I found the same guard who had chased Amal
away last year. He knew her, and he informed me that Amal had
gotten very sick and had to be taken to Baghdad for treatment.
She was suffering from the devastating effects of the depleted
uranium left after the Gulf War. Such toxic radiation will inevitably
lead to death. Does that mean Hope will die? I returned to my
room, wondering, "So where is the good news of Immanuel,
God-with-us? Is it to be found in just thinking about the misery
or by doing something about it?" And these are just the stories
of children; there are just as many stories of the elderly and
widows, troubled youth and suffering women and men….
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ, This is a great challenge
to all—to do and not only to think, to be Christ in the world
and not just celebrate his coming into the world at Christmas.
Christmas is not just a memory, but the implementation of the
good news. It is reincarnating the incarnation by speaking out
against anything that might prevent God from visiting us and Jesus
from being born into our lives and changing our lives so that
we can make a difference in the lives of others. Can we give the
people of the Middle East the hope of Christ which they need more
than anything else at his time? Perhaps we can if, at the beginning
of this century, we honor Jesus by honoring and serving those
for whom he was born and for whom he died.
Yours in His,
Nuhad Tomeh
The 2001 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 137
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