Hope That Doesn't Ever End...

...even when the sky is falling.

Kutless (a Christian band) has a song called What Faith Can Do. The chorus of that song goes like this:

I've seen dreams that move the mountains, hope that doesn't ever end - even when the sky is falling. I've seen miracles just happen, silent prayers get answered, broken hearts become brand new. That's what faith can do.

 I love this song. It is the song I listen to first every time I turn on my ipod. However, that line there in the chorus about hope has been a stumbling block for me.  It hasn't been something with which I can connect. I've yet to find myself in a situation that is so desolate and full of despair that the powerful hope expressed in those lyrics has been warranted.

Until now.  Until the Holy Land.

There are many things about my pilgrimage that I remember vividly, many that will continue to be part of my prayer for years to come. However, the thing that I cannot get past right now is the faith of the Christians there. The lyrics to that song I've loved and listened to for so long now came alive in that faith. Theirs is indeed a faith so strong that it nurtures hope, the kind that doesn't fade.

You see, in the Holy Land, the sky is falling. Many times it is falling right down onto the Christians, who are, by great statistic, the minority.

At the end of the day, when they are surrounded by Muslims and Jews making money off their faith, worshiping something else in the space of their Savior, and dominating the culture and the land, they still have faith. Strong faith. A faith that is not shaken. A faith that knows it is part of a religion that is bigger than the hardships they face.  The Christians know that they are part of a universal Church, that they are united in prayer and that in the Communion of Saints they are connected to a people outside of themselves.

And they have hope.

Hope that one day there will be peace.  Hope that the Christians around the world will not forget them.  Hope that one day their reward will be great in Heaven. Though their numbers and the space that belongs to them sometimes fade, their hope never will.

That's what faith can do.

That's what faith is doing.

It was a blessing to witness it first hand.