It’s Good Friday and that means Easter is Sunday, and that means the holiest day of the year for millions of Christians and that means a day of reflecting on the spiritual peace behind the meaning of Easter.
Even for those who aren’t Christian, Easter is a holiday that is seen as a kind of new start, the informal beginning of spring, signified by Easter eggs, baby chicks and a peaceful time with family.
But the area of the world where Easter began is anything but peaceful.
Today’s news story at the New York Times for instance reads like this:
“What was billed as a six-week campaign of peaceful protests in Gaza, culminating in a mass march toward Israel, descended almost immediately into chaos and bloodshed on Friday, with at least five Palestinians reported killed in confrontations with Israeli soldiers along the border fence.”
A lack of peace in the Middle East is nothing new. For several decades, the news from that part of the world has been about violence and war. And much of it is goes back a lot longer than a few decades. And much of it is about conflict between religious faiths.
And yet that’s the part of the world where the religious celebration of Easter as well as Christmas began.
There certainly has been a lot of talk over the years about peace in the Middle East but with very little success. Every American president for more than 50 years has talked about ways to find peace in the Middle East. And yet it doesn’t happen.
But on this Easter weekend here in 2018, just weeks before the 70th anniversary of Israel becoming a state, there will be many people around the world and not just in the Middle East praying for peace there, one day.
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