Lebanon #7: Double Listening
Double Listening
Barbara Chandler, for the team
North Avenue Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia
One of my favorite authors is John Stott, who was an Anglican pastor of All Souls Church in London and founder of Langham partners. A key quote of his was “double listening,” relating God’s unchanging Word to our ever-changing world.
Two encounters this week have shown me this. Every morning I take a walk up the road from the conference center to a beautiful vista overlooking the mountains and the Mediterranean Sea. I noticed a beautiful home with lovely hydrangeas and geraniums along the way. One morning I noticed a lady sitting on the patio and I said, “Bon Jour.” She replied back in English, and we struck up a conversation about her flowers. She invited me for coffee, but I told her maybe tomorrow. So today she invited me in again and I joined her on her patio for a lovely Arabic coffee and a chat. We shared our lives – she and her husband are entrepreneurs and have started businesses in Africa, Lebanon, and Asia. Her family has deep roots in Lebanon as her grandfather built the Beirut Museum of Art which we visited last weekend. She shared the many struggles of Lebanon in the past and today including inflation, problems with the government, and attitudes toward women. Her three children have left Lebanon to study abroad. She shared she is an Evangelical (which here means Protestant). We shared how we are sisters in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit despite the many struggles and policies in our respective countries that tend to separate us. What an unexpected joy on this journey to meet this beautiful sister in Christ through a daily walk and admiration of her flowers.
The next encounter was yesterday when we traveled to the lovely town of Hammana. We disembarked the bus and started walking through the old part of the city. A woman at our conference named Abir came up to me and asked if I would sit on a bench with her. As we talked and shared photos of our families, we had much in common. She is a pediatrician in Syria and shared how the COVID crisis and sanctions on her country had affected her family. She had paid 3 months’ salary for her transport to this conference, plus several hundred dollars and the dishonesty and humiliation by officers at the border. The cost to buy a kilo of lamb meat is 25% of her monthly income. She continues to work in the government hospital in the morning and her private practice in the afternoon. She said her patients frequently can’t pay or pay what they can. She continues to treat the children brought to her despite these struggles. We discussed our countries and the policies and impact on individuals, but as sisters in Christ we have hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. I was challenged by her commitment and sacrifice to continue in her professional calling to care for the children and to attend the conference.
What beautiful stories of faith and courage I have encountered on this journey in Lebanon as God has tuned my ears to “double listening.”
This morning we had an inspiring talk from Lois Andrews (Elder from First Presbyterian – San Diego) about the Zacchaeus story from Luke 19:1-10. We were challenged to identify what tree I had climbed to see Jesus more clearly, what social cost am I willing to pay to follow Him, when have I yearned to see Jesus so much or what tree I am willing to climb to know Jesus better. As we shared in small groups, it was a thought-provoking lesson to look at this familiar story in new ways.
