We are human. In our all too “humanness” we tend to pick sides. Christians in Israel and Palestine have struggled in these conflicts. THIS STORY is tough to read and absorb because all that Christians have tried for decades in the arena of reconciliation just keeps getting shoved back into the ground.

After decades of work, this is one observation:

“I do not know if reconciliation can happen,” Loden told me at her house in Netanya in west-central Israel. “We’ve talked for many years: ‘Can we build a bridging narrative? Can we build a bridging theology?’ And every effort to do this has dissipated.”

Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy has forever changed the way I read the Beatitudes because we typically think of those “blessed” statements as, “Do this and you will be blessed.”

Willard turned the whole thing on its head and said, “This is a list of losers.”

I mean, in a Roman world where power means everything, who wants to be around someone who cries all the time, or thinks “peace” is the way, or wants to be “meek” when you need to be a warrior?

Today, these peacemakers in Israel are considered losers. They try again and again… to what end?

These are the blessed one. The Kingdom of God can touch even them.

It is hard work. It is beyond shattered right now. And the Lord touches them and calls them blessed.

Go figure.