Day 4: January 4, 2015 - Complicated for a Reason

January 4, 2015
Day 4  Complicated for a Reason

The Middle East is an area of intense interest to me. Not only am I highly intrigued by the land on the coast where the Jews live, but I want to understand all of the drama beyond the Euphrates and Tigris. All of it. So I read and I read and I read. Ok, maybe not as well as I ought for I am no further in my understanding than I was thirty years ago. But I am trying. Making sense of the mess is taking me some precious time.

In high school, in the late 70's,  I had an intriguing teacher of media. It was the coolest class and he was the coolest professor. He would sit on one of the empty desks in his wired rim glasses with his doc martin's resting on the chair filling us with riveting information.  He warned us of many things. The Middle East was top on his list, "keep your eyes peeled on these countries, they are going to become increasingly more and more in the news." He was and is right.

My interest in all things Middle East mounts at the same pace my confusion does - rather quickly. When I am reading about the conflict, this is how it starts off for me:

There are two groups, the Shiites and the Sunnis. They are both Muslim but many moons ago they began to dispute about hmei, ithe the megaa lis lith weok dok och lchoooo l. In he oth osht bkii i, im hmmh l. Pkem kemi kkimh hwien etin tbe! O, nimm likeneohm. 

I know, YOU CAN'T READ IT, NOR UNDERSTAND IT!

This happens to me all the time. Just when I think I have found the right article, the right book, and I think I am making headway - poof it's gone and, in seconds, I lose my way. But just today I had this thought. Maybe my lack of clarity is the very essence of the issue. Maybe due to the fact that it is a bumbling mess of illogical trysts of unnecessary claims and stakes that seek only to establish territorial rights in pursuit of being right, with everyone hell bent on proving their claims, it will continue to remain a mess of a tangled mushy noodles. Oh, yes, religion at its best! The Middle East lacks reasoning and there in lies the complicated mess.

Then the thought struck me - ya dummy, just pray for peace. Pray for the tangled mess to be untangled. Pray for the Sunnis and Shiite families. Pray that the complications affecting their lives would be ironed out by the free and simple message of the gospel. To know the ins and outs of the Middle East situation does require you to be a rocket scientist or a Middle Eastern professor. But a call to pray requires your willingness.