Day of love and mourning

Well yesterday was Valentine's Day, which a group of us singles celebrated Singles Awareness Day. But anyway, I checked my mail that morning and saw I got, along with all of the other students, valentines from our dear college president and professor, Dr. Wright and his wife. On it was a verse form Psalm 52:8 "But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God's unfailing love for ever and ever." This verse was quite relevant seeing the olive trees living in very rough terrain and can weather through strong winds and flash floods.


After class a group of us hopped on the tram system to Mt. Hertzel to visit and pay our respects to the victims of the Holocaust at the Yad vaShem Museum. This was my first time of the tram which I found out it is just a two way line and building it cost millions of dollars extra and the work was delayed a lot. But anyway going back to the museum, we entered the Gateway with a verse from Ezekiel 37:14 in English and Hebrew "I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD." So far with just this verse and being in the chosen land, it has an somber and amazing (bad, not good) feeling. We walked through to the Garen of the Righteous where every tree in the garden and all over the museum grounds has plaque to each tree representing a gentile and or a resistance group who helped or tried to help the Jewish people to safety from extermination. We even found a tree in memory of Oskar Schindler, and this started to get real for me and I;m sure for the other as well. We walked on tot he Children's Memorial; where on the hill was a group of twelve or so limestone pillars of different heights representing the 1.5 million Jewish children from the little ones for the infants and the taller ones for the teenagers who had their live cut short and their family lines eliminated. 

Oskar Schindler's memorial

We went in the Memorial which was donated by a couple who lost their son from the concentration camps. Inside there was a large wall with portraits of the children killed and in the background was the recording of the 1.5 million children's names, age, and country which to complete the whole list would take 7 months continuously. The next room was pitch balk and the only light was from one candle reflected on a room of mirrors showing the light like millions of stars. Each star was to symbolize each child from infant to 18 years of age killed in the Holocaust. This part standing and hearing the names of the kids would were murdered and seeing the millions of lights was truly sad and I was starting to weep. We saw the Warsaw Memorial of large iron murals of the Jewish people being placed on train cars. And the Concentration camp hall, where on the floor was the names of the each concentration camps that took the lives of the millions of Jews and in the middle was a tomb of the unknown, which was filled with the ash of thousands of people and a everlasting flame. This too had a impact on me after seeing the camps names that I recognized from past history classes. We went on and toured the portrait hall of the portraits of people who were in the ghettos and camps right before they died. Seeing kids in the hall all the way to the eldery was a unspeakable and really I dont know what words to say, just a real way to see the victims of the Holocaust.

Aslo yesterday night was my night class, Church in the East. Where we learned to day about the Dhimma system which is a subgroup of the Sharia Law. A form of ingrained cultural, historical, and legal way of persecuting the Christians and Jews who live in Muslim territory. This form of forced contract is where the Christians and Jews have to pay a tax to live in Muslim regions, are not able to ride a horse, provide witness against a Muslim, wear clothes like a clown, and is subjected as a lesser people, even more inferior than the lowest class in Muslim tradition. This kind of tax they must pay is for any travel, and housing tax. Also any church or synagogue is owned by the Muslims and is taxed and the Christians/Jews must pay or bad things will happen. The pride of the Christian Church, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is one of these, a Muslim family owns the Church property and is rented by the 4 Christian denominations. This form of persecution is killing the Eastern, the Syrian, and the Coptic Church so much that these Churches will be gone, extinct in roughly 50 years. So I ask all of you who are reading this to pray for the Eastern Churches for their growth/survival and for the love of Christ to change the Muslim ingrained culture of the Dhimma to a more reformed and equal, fair way of living. If this does not happen then there will be NO church in the East.