Lebanon/Syria #5: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction
The apostle Paul gave us the word which encapsulates faith-lived-out-through-much-difficulty: perseverance. Few of us have had to live it, but we know it when we see it. And we saw it today in Mahardeh, an all-Christian city of about 25,000 halfway between Aleppo and Damascus, where the Presbyterian Church is pastored by the Reverend Ma’an Bitar. In a place that doesn’t receive all that many visitors, our team was greeted with great joy by Ma’an, his wife, Ghawth, and their daughter, Fida, who had just graduated from medical school in Damascus. But the hugs were extra long for Jack, Julie, Steve, and me because we had been here before—and in the midst of the war. And indeed, as we sat on the patio of their home, overlooking the church, and drinking the first of many subsequent cups of tea, we were very conscious of the fact that the former sound of shelling in the distance (which we well remembered) had now been replaced by the gentle rustling of leaves in the nearby lemon tree and the voices of children playing at the kindergarten which is run by and at the church, a few hundred feet away.
But our blessing at being reunited with our family-by faith-here in Mahardeh was to be doubled, because Reverend Ibrahim Nseir, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Aleppo, and his wife, Tami, had driven down from the north to see us! These two cities, Mahardeh and Aleppo, had seen some of the most intense fighting during the war in Syria. And the few hours we would share with representatives of these two faithful congregations would be a graduate-level intensive course in the word “perseverance.”
Half of Aleppo had been pulverized in the war (several of us had been there to see that devastation). Ibrahim‘s church had been destroyed during that fighting and a new sanctuary had taken shape in another part of the city. But on the ruins of the old church, a new ministry is now taking shape. The Aleppo Christian Center, which The Outreach Foundation is helping to build, will be a place where theological education can be conducted, and where ecumenical and interfaith dialogue can be nurtured. And across the street from the new location of the sanctuary, a clinic has been opened by the church, serving the poor community with low-cost medical care (free in many cases) that they cannot access any place else, over 40 persons a day come for care, said Ibrahim. Tami runs a thriving Sunday school (which meets on Friday) that now has over 200 children from the community attending it. Perseverance.
Mahardeh, like Aleppo, has a significant ministry with children. Their daily preschool/kindergarten cares for 120 little ones, with many of those attending free of charge. During the war, when Mahardeh was often caught in the crossfire between warring terrorist factions, the town was forced to raise its own volunteer army for defense, and on earlier visits, we met with the pharmacists, plumbers, and teachers who suddenly took up arms to keep their town from being overrun. They were led by a local contractor, Simon, who became their “commander,” and whose deep Orthodox faith prompted him, after the fighting stopped, to erect a beautiful chapel on the ruins of an old convent, which commemorates the sacrifice of those who had died in Mahardeh. Rev Ma’an became the spiritual support for this “instant army,” too many of whom had become martyrs here. Perseverance.
In Romans 5, Paul “packages” perseverance between “suffering” (which produces it) and “character” which it then forms. And in the mystical alchemy which is the journey of faith, it all inevitably leads to hope (which, by the way, does not disappoint). In a country still broken by a protracted war, hammered by the pandemic, and reeling from a collapsed economy that has turned even the middle class into paupers, we found this fragile “hope” manifest in the mission and ministry which the Church here carries onward and outward, because it continues to look upward. Perseverance.
Marilyn Borst, The Outreach Foundation
