Israel

Lest We Forget

/ Greg Asimakoupoulos
A memorial to concentration camp victims at Stroud’s Jewish Community Center

On this Holocaust Remembrance Day
we contemplate the memory
of those who perished in death camps
eight decades ago
simply because they were
documented descendants of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

We ponder the priceless worth of souls
created in the image of God
as well as the price tag
of silent complicity and complacency
that continues to allow Evil
to rob the innocent of liberty and justice…
and life!

Let us take time today
to view the present
through the lens of the past
all the while focusing
on the sanctity of human life
even as we take time to remember
that those who fail to learn from history
are doomed to repeat it.

In addition to each week’s post on this website, Greg Asimakoupoulos offers daily video devotionals on his YouTube channel. Here is a sample video. If you are interested in receiving these devotionals Monday through Friday, you can subscribe on Greg’s channel.

Israel’s 9/11

/ Greg Asimakoupoulos

Yes, October 7th
is Israel’s September 11th.
Their Ground Zero
was a ground offensive
by Hamas
that blindsided innocent concert goers
giving a human face
to inhumane terror.

It was a kind of
Woodstock Festival
punctuated by rivers of blood
instead of puddles of mud.

Hostages were kidnapped.
Lives were stolen.
Babies were beheaded.
Evil assaulted the vulnerable.
It was a day the music died.

The Land of Promise
promised revenge.
And rightly so.
Untold wrong
had raped the region.
Retaliation was a given
in light of what was taken.

And Gaza
bore the brunt
of a nation
whose pride
had been bruised
and whose heart
had been broken.

Eye for eye!
Tooth for tooth!
Innocent for innocent!
War for war!
Death for death!

Lord, have mercy!
Lord, bring peace!
Lord, forgive!
Lord, restore!
Lord, bring the hostages home!
Lord, hear our prayer!

**This painting is by Udi Merioz, an Israeli artist I met in Jerusalem five years ago. It pictures the IDF at the Wailing Wall praying for peace.

Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem

/ Greg Asimakoupoulos
A call to pray for the conflict in the Middle East

If you listen, you can hear it.
Agonizing screams.
Haunting groans.
Heaving sighs.
And the whys are easily answered.

Once again Rachel is weeping for her children.
As in ancient times,
she refuses to be comforted.
And for good reason.
Her heart is broken in a million shards of sorrow.
There is brutality and bloodshed.
There is pain and suffering.
There are unprecedented atrocities.
The stench of death dominates the domain of Jacob’s descendants.

In the “City of Peace,”
there is no peace.
In a nation that once flowed with milk and honey,
there is bitterness and hate.
The Promised Land is a region of broken promises.
Sibling rivalry is taking a deadly ungodly toll.

Yes, the sons of Abraham are fighting each other as before.
And this dysfunctional family will likely destroy itself
unless peace-loving people
look for creative ways to broker a settlement.

For a place to which all of Abraham’s progeny lay claim,
let us pray.
Let us pray for the peace of Jerusalem.