Together the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures use “affliction” (θλιβω; דנצ) or related root words, approximately 150 times. In the Hebrew Scriptures דנצ most often describes an external dilemma of being constricted or hemmed in (Dt 28:52), treated with hostility (Is 11:13) or oppressed (Is 19:10).  Many of the uses are contained in Leviticus where the term is applied to those who are somehow rendered impure or unclean – they are thus placed outside the camp, removed from all that they knew and loved. While the use of דנצ is often external, there are personal and internal implications. The expelled are abandoned. Continue reading →

In listening to the story and pleading of Elias Syriani’s children, it was hard not to be overwhelmed with compassion for them and their cause.  A part of me was in the present, attentive to their stories.  A part of me was already experiencing fear for what awaited them knowing that their cry for mercy would fall on deaf ears. There was little hope for a stay of execution.  Were the children prepared for the new suffering that awaited them?  Would the recent joy of reconciliation and memories of reunion with their father be enough to sustain them through the sorrow that would come? Continue reading →

There is a certain rhythm in each day in our lives. Weekdays, Saturdays, Sundays, vacation days and all the other categories of days. Each has its own rhythm. No matter what your state and role in life, your time is rarely your own. There are demands upon you time and attention that are unrelenting, recurring, and unavoidable – even as they are welcomed and cherished.. It can be a rhythm that sets the current and flow upon which you navigate the day like an Olympic kayaker on rapids of the slalom course. It can be a tyrant that can drive you to want to strike back at Time. On the afternoon of February 15, 1894, a French anarchist, Martial Bourdin, carried a homemade bomb in what was thought to be an attempt to blow up the Greenwich Royal Observatory which just 10 years earlier had been established as the global time standard — Greenwich Mean Time. Was it a symbolic revolutionary act to disrupt the tyranny of time? In any case, he wasn’t the only one to attack clocks during this period: In Paris, rebels simultaneously destroyed public clocks across the city, and in Bombay, protestors shattered the famous Crawford Market clock with gunfire. Continue reading →