Thoughts on Christmas

For all of my childhood Christmas meant a trip to Aunt Jan's house. It was the same every year. I would walk into her house on Christmas eve and it was like walking into a Christmas wonderland. She had a giant tree in every room of her house. Every tree was themed differently. I would explore each room and marvel at the trees. Her main tree, in the living room, always had these lights that were liquid filled and bubbled as they got hot. To a child the light looked "really cool" as it shone through the bubbling colored water. There was more though. The whole house was decorated. There were stockings hung and already bulging with gifts that we couldn't look at yet. There were mountains of desserts and baked goods. My mouth still waters just thinking about cherry tarts, sausage balls, and all of the other goodies.

After exploring the house and eating my fill of Christmas food, I would then go outside. I have no way of guessing how many thousands of lights my Aunt Jan strung every year. The whole house was covered. The trees and bushes were lit. The Gazebo was decorated. Santa and the reindeer were on the lawn.

On Christmas morning we had a routine. My Uncle Cecil decreed that there would be breakfast before the presents and so I looked longingly at the piles of gifts beneath the tree (really all over the living room) as we ate breakfast. It wasn't really torture though because breakfast was amazing. We had a full spread in the finest Southern tradition, bacon, eggs, sausages, gravy, biscuits, grits. It probably wasn't very healthy but it sure was good.

After breakfast we moved on to gifts. I have no idea how many people Aunt Jan bought gifts for but she bought all of the children in the family several. I always liked remote control cars and electronic games and I always got something great. Then we opened stockings and they had wonderful things in them.

After gifts we would play the rest of the morning before having an amazing lunch and leaving to visit my mom's family that evening.

Now, I'm a father and a minister so it's my turn to make Christmas happen for my kids and others. I spent weeks arranging to have gifts brought here from the States for my kids. Kelli and I worked for days to prepare our home and the food, The last three days were honestly exhausting. We hosted about 25 people for Christmas lunch (There are a lot of American and European ministry workers floating around the country. They are away from their families and need a place to go. As a way of giving to the community and ministering to other ministers we open our home on both Thanksgiving and Christmas.). During all of the cooking, cleaning, decorating, and gift wrapping, I thought of Aunt Jan and how she worked all those years to make Christmas happen for me.

Aunt Jan died just a few days before Christmas. In one of her last conversations with me, I talked to her about how I remembered Christmases. She brightened when I mentioned it and said, "Jamie, that's how we want to live. We want to live so that people have good memories." My aunt Jan left me with amazing magical memories.

I just hope that I have learned the lessons of hospitality and giving that my Aunt Jan taught. I hope that I can give people the same kinds of magical memories that she gave me.

Why Palestinians?

I was teaching a class one day during the build up to the most recent Gulf War. It was an American History class and so the conversation turned to America's actions regarding Iraq. I've been teaching classes to Arab kids on a volunteer basis for years now. It's a great way to give to the community and get to know people. I'm used to it, but it's still a bit difficult trying to explain America's actions to people who view America as an aggressor and their enemy. I try to explain why things happen without getting into who's right and who's wrong. But, sometimes your personal opinions creep through.

One of the students in the class was a very bright young lady. She is now at an Ivy League university on a full scholarship. She's also an amazingly kind and good girl and one of my all-time most prized students. She piped up and said, "Well, maybe France will help us." At that point I just couldn't keep my thoughts to myself. I scoffed at her and said, "Do you really think that? They're not going to do anything for you. They just talk like they like Arabs to keep their Arab minority happy. They're never actually going to do anything for you."

As I was finishing that sentence, I looked to the back of the room and the young woman who had spoken was crying - hard. "What's wrong?", I asked.

I'll never forget her tearful answer. "Nobody loves us.", she said "Nobody loves us."

She was right. Americans think of the Palestinians as terrorists. Europeans have the same view. Other Arabs see them as trouble makers and as failures who lost their country. Israelis, of course, see them as the great enemy. There are few people groups on Earth with so few friends.

As Christians, I believe that we have two primary obligations. One is the Great Commandment, to love God and love others. The other is the Great Commission, to bring others closer to Jesus so that they can share in that love. As western Christians we cannot let our political views keep us from sharing the love of God with people. Jesus didn't.

What she said broke my heart. It's not the fault of a fifteen year old girl that there are one hundred year old conflicts here. How can we as Christians justify letting our political opinions about old fights keep us from sharing the love of Jesus with people? On that day, I resolved to do everything I could to let the Arabs of this country, the Palestinians, know that Jesus loves them. That's why we stay here and that's why the majority of our ministries serve the Palestinians.

Teaching

My wife Kelli and I are both certified school teachers. She's an elementary teacher and I am certified in high school social studies. Because of this we have always used education as a gateway into the community here. We teach English, History, Religion, or whatever as a service to the people here. My ministry, here in Jerusalem, has always revolved around students and schools. We now have a team of interns here at the church and so I, naturally, have them doing a lot of work in local schools.

Mondays and Wednesdays are our long days. On Mondays and Wednesdays we leave the house at seven and drive an hour to a little West Bank village called Aboud. Aboud is one of the few remaining villages here that is largely Christian. The Church of God has a school there. (I detailed their struggles in a previous post.) We are there for three hours, from 8-11, teaching English. We leave there and go to Jerusalem school where we teach Bible classes and aid teachers for three more hours. When that is over, I send the interns to Ramallah to teach another English class, this time to University students. I stay in Jerusalem and coach basketball. The Ramallah classes end at six and the interns get home a seven, just in time on Wednesday for Bible study.

It sounds, from reading this, like I'm a slave driver. And, honestly running full-speed from seven to seven can be taxing, but it's worth it because we encounter a different segment of the population at each stop. In the village, we are trying to be a blessing to village dwelling Christian Arabs. At Jerusalem School, we are working with secularized, Westernized, wealthy Arabs. And, at Ramallah we are working with a more "normal" segment of the population. I guess you would call them city Muslims.

Educationally, I think that it's important to understand that the Arab world is not homogeneous. There are great variations between different regions and people groups. My students are exposed to this by interacting with some of the different segments of the society. I also think that it's important for ministry. By getting to know all of these different people, we get a chance to be witnesses to them. All of this work is paying off. Thursday night, we had about thirty people here for our youth might. The vast majority of them were kids we know from Jerusalem school.

I would ask you to pray for us on Mondays and Wednesdays. They are long hard days, but they are also when we do most of our relationship building. Pray that God will put the right people in front of us and that He will give us the right words to say to them. We don't want to work just to do something. We want to impact the land and society here for the Kingdom of God.

Learning the Land: Caesarea

Now that we have students here at the discipleship center part of what we are doing with them is teaching them the land of Israel and how it relates to their Bibles. This past Friday, we took them to the Mediterranean coast to see Ceasarea. I was a history teacher before I became a pastor and the historian in me gets excited to go to the places where important events happened.

Caesarea was Herod's capitol city. He built it in Greco-Roman style with aqueducts, bath houses, and theatres. The city, which has a very limited natural supply of fresh water, was made possible by Roman engineering. They built an aqueduct that brought water from Mt. Carmel, over 70 miles away.

The Romans also invented hydraulic concrete, concrete that hardens under water. Herod made extensive use of this substance in Caesarea. He built two giant piers that extend out into the ocean and create an artificial harbor to facilitate shipping. He also built a palace that extended out into the ocean. One of its many luxuries was a swimming pool that was bordered by the sea on three sides. Herod built his palace extending into the sea because it was beautiful, but also because he was paranoid. He kept a boat docked at the end of the palace at all times. The boat was there so that he could escape if he needed to.

The palace was later taken over by the Roman governors. I wondered as I walked there Friday, just where Paul stood before Felix and Festus. The Bible says that Paul was sent for, so probably somewhere in the palace. It's pretty cool to walk around thinking "maybe Paul stood here" and trying to imagine the scene.

Caesarea is also important in recent Biblical archeology. For years, critics of the Bible complained that there was no extra-Biblical source naming Pontius Pilate. They pointed out that the Romans were great record keepers and that there should be some document somewhere with his name on it. They used the absence of such a document as evidence against the Bible.

When Israeli archaeologists began to excavate Caesarea they made an interesting find. The found a cornerstone for one of the buildings there. The cornerstone had an inscription. In Latin it said roughly, " built under Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea." It's funny how the truth defends itself.

As the weeks go by, and as we visit more of the country's sites, I'll keep you posted on what we see and learn.

JUDC

It's exciting times around here. Two years ago Kelli and I came into the country with the idea of starting a discipleship ministry. We wanted to bring young believers out from America or Europe and give them a chance to be discipled here and to learn the land. At the same time we wanted them to be active in the work here and to help broaden our impact in the city.

When Kelli and i first got here, I had envisioned renting a building for this purpose. God had a better plan. About one week after I got here, Kelli and I were asked to take the pastorate of the Mount of Olives Church of God. It was an amazing door opening up for us because the church here has guest rooms that were at the time being used to lodge travelers. We're now using them as dorm rooms.

For the last two years we have been laying the ground work and praying a lot. I sometimes wondered if it was reasonable to try to recruit young people to come out to the Middle East. The funny thing was, I didn't work very hard recruiting the three young people that we have. The two young men wrote me and Kayla came here for another event and stayed in our building. Three months later she's back full-time

I feel very confident the it was God, not me, that assembled this team. I also believe that one year from now we will look back and see that God has done amazing things in and through us.

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.