By this all men will know that you are my disciples...

If Christians live out the Great Commandment within the church, the world will see it and they will know we are special. That's what Jesus said (John 13:35). The whole thing terrifies Satan. If Christians start being Christ-like to one another, the results will change the world. That's why Satan spends so much time sowing strife within the church.

Here in Israel, the church is painfully divided. For most of the last two-thousand years the Greek Orthodox Church has been "the" church here. About one-hundred years ago the Catholics and Evangelicals showed up. The Catholics have been very successful at displacing the Orthodox. They've used a lot of money poured into schools and social services to do it. The Evangelicals have had some success winning native Arab Christians and a lot of success winning Jews. But, in the mean time the country has become a center of great rivalry between the Christian groups.

The biggest embarrassment to the Christian community is the Holy Sepulchre. It is the (rather large) church that contains Calvary and the tomb of Christ according to the tradition of the ancient churches. It is shared between the Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Syriac, Egyptian Coptic, Ethiopian, and Armenian churches (maybe a couple more). The churches are constantly arguing about who gets to use what floor space and when. The bickering is so bad that for hundreds of years a Muslim mediator has been appointed to set the schedule and hold the actual keys to the building.

Every year at Easter all of the foolishness comes bubbling to the surface. The members of the separate churches all go to Easter services armed with clubs and knives and if they are slighted in any way, they fight. Every year the Israeli police are called in to break up the fighting. This past Easter the Syrians and Armenians fought (Somebody stepped over some line). Several people were hospitalized and a few Armenians were arrested. The Armenians then marched on the police station demanding the release of their "brothers". I can't imagine how Jesus feels when people who claim to be His act so badly in front of non-believers.

In recent weeks all of this rivalry has hit close to home. The Church of God runs a Christian school in a little Arab village, on the West Bank, called Aboud. The school was founded over thirty years ago by Margaret Gaines. The school has functioned all of that time with a great reputation both for the education and for the schools spiritual impact. The Catholics also run a Christian school in the same village. They want to shut us down.

Unfortunately, due to budgetary reasons, the CoG school only goes through sixth grade. When the students leave sixth grade they have two options for junior high and high school. One is the government school and Palestinian authority government schools are not a good option. The other option is the Catholic school.

The Catholic schools have begun failing all of our students in all of their classes and then going to the ministry of education and saying that our students are not prepared. The result is that people are not enrolling in our school because they know that their kids will have problems in the future. Also, if this pressure persists, we run the risk of losing our license.

We are looking at a lot of options. Primarily, the school needs to expand to twelfth grade. Secondarily, we are looking at trying to bring in American Christian volunteers to improve the schools English program. A school that goes through twelfth grade with superior English classes would be hard to attack.

For more than thirty years the Aboud school has been a light in a dark place and hundreds have come to faith because of its witness. Please pray for us as we try to save this institution. And specifically pray for Suhaila Khoury. She is the school principal. She lives in the village and has to wrestle these issues every day. Suhaila has relatives in the U.S.. She could have immigrated and left all of this behind, but she has stayed because she feels called to be a witness where she is. I don't know a tougher soldier of Christ anywhere, but she has a lot of changes and decisions in front of her.

Also, pray for the small church in this land. We are less than two percent. The Evangelical church is a fraction of the two percent and we are torn too. Unfortunately, the Christians who come out here tend to take on the hatreds of the people they work with. So, missionaries that work with Jews identify with them and dislike the Arabs and missionaries the work with Arabs don't like Jews. The bigger problem is that the missionaries/Christians often squabble. I'm pretty sure that Jesus loves both groups and that he is the solution for both Jews and Arabs. Pray that God will give us the eyes of Christ and that we will see everyone here the way He sees them. Only then will we as believers be able to walk in love and unity and really impact this place.

Smiting

Last night Kelli and I had some friends over for dinner. When the meal was served my son Andrew, who is four years old, asked if he could say the blessing. We let him. His prayer went something like this:

"Dear Lord, thank You for mommy and daddy and for taking care of us. And Lord, could you kill all of the bad people, because you are bigger than them and can smack them down.

Amen"

He didn't even mention the meal. My buddy Shane wanted to know if we had been reading Psalms lately. It was a pretty funny incident and it got me thinking.

About two days prior, I wanted to do some smiting of my own. My wife and I took the kids to a park. About half way into our stay, Kelli took Abigail and walked across the street to buy snacks at a convenience store. Andrew, under dad's watchful eye, went to the swings. When he got about three steps from the swings, two boys about ten years of age sprinted from behind and took the two swings. Andrew looked across the playground to me and with tears welling in his four-year-old eyes said, "But, I wanted the swings first." I told him that the boys were being jerks but to just wait his turn.

The boys waited until Andrew was about ten yards away from the swings and got off of them and walked away. Andrew then headed back for the swings. They let him get close and then sprinted in front of him again and took them. This time they never even swung. They just stood between him and the swings and as he walked away so did they. Andrew went to the slides and the boys left the swings but kept eyeing Andrew and any time he went for the swings they cut him off.

I was watching all of this from a park bench. I watched Andrew growing more frustrated and I watched the boys laughing as they taunted him. It didn't take long until my fatherly wrath was unleashed. I stormed across the playground. Thankfully the boys had enough sense to flee before the large angry man who was coming for them. I snatched one of the swings and gave it to Andrew. He came over and enjoyed swinging for a while. The whole time I stayed close and made sure that the boys, who were still lurking, left him alone.

I wouldn't have believed five years ago that I could get so angry over kids behavior on a playground. But, as a parent, when somebody messes with your kid, it very quickly stirs up a powerful instinct to protect and defend. We have to be responsible with how we act in those moments of righteous anger, but I believe that the instinct is from God.

In Matthew chapter 18 Jesus says, "if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." Basically Jesus is saying, "mess with my kids and I'll get you." Isn't it cool to realize that God watches over us the same way I was watching over Andrew at the park and that He gets angry when people "mess" with us. In the words of my son, God is bigger than the bad people and can smack them down.

A New Baby

On July 20, Kelli and I had our fourth child. Micah David Creel was born at about 6 PM and he weighed about eight pounds (3.6 kilos). He is the second child that we have had here in Israel. It's a very different experience having a child here.

The hospitals are good and the quality of labor and delivery care is comparable to America, but from that point on it gets different. The first thing is that there are no private rooms here. Kelli was lucky this time. There was only one other lady in the room with her. Some rooms have as many as six women and on particularly busy days, some women just have a bed in the hall.

Micah was the first son that we have had here and that led to another interesting situation. In Israel circumcision is not just a medical procedure done for hygienic purposes. It is a religious act. Here it is done according to the Bible, on the eighth day by a special rabbi called a "mohel". About twenty of them came by and gave us their card and offered to do the deed. We eventually found a doctor that would do the procedure without the religious ceremony.

Americans don't like to see unpleasant things. We pay people to prepare dead bodies for us. We don't see them until they are clean and dressed in a big cushy coffin. We don't ever see an animal slaughtered. We just pick up vacuum sealed meat from Wal-Mart. We also send our baby boys off for circumcision and get them back hours later when they are bandaged up and through screaming. I had to hold Micah down while the doctor cut away. Micah is over the whole thing. I, however, am still disturbed.

Now, we are four weeks into having the little guy at home and the other reality of missionary life is setting in. We are separated from our families. Micah has been a very demanding baby up until this point. He eats constantly and cries a lot. If we were at home we would have grand-parents and relatives to lean on. Here we don't. Kelli and I take turns with the kids. We call it tagging in and out. We're learning to live with chronic fatigue and yearning for the day when Micah starts sleeping on a regular schedule.

Honestly, the process has been hard, but we thank God for getting us through so far and we know that He will sustain us. We are most thankful for the fact that Micah is healthy and growing.

Abu Shakra???

I decided on a pretty odd URL for this blog so I thought I might explain.

Several years ago I was volunteering at a local Christian missions school that ministers to Arabs. I was teaching religion and history to high-schoolers. The girls in my tenth grade history class decided that Mr. Jamison was too much to say and not sufficiently descriptive. They started calling me Abu Shakra. It means "father of the blond". The name stuck and for quite some time I answered to it.

I don't get called that as much as I used to, but I think that it is pretty representative of my life here. First of all it was given to me and used by the Jerusalem students that I love so much. Secondly, it symbolizes a life lived in a place where every single person who sees you immediately knows that you are a foreigner. And lastly, it's exactly where I am now. I am currently the father of four beautiful blond children.