The Refusal to be Comforted
- Springs of Hope
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
As frequently happens I sit to write about something but my heart leads me elsewhere. I had planned to make use of a cold wet day by writing about the school that we adopted on the other side of the mountain. As I wrote, I found myself sighing and then paused a long pause which turned into a several hour halt as the meditations of my heart led me to the widows of Shariya camp, each a queen in her own right. Ladies of nobility and dignity.
Ladies, our friends, our family with whom we took time to sit with yesterday as the clouds rolled in covering the camp with a wet silence, and the damp crept through their tent walls leaving its determined imprint on the unpainted cement. Ladies who would have been the epitome of Proverbs 31 had their household not be stripped from them.
Women who still wait for their husbands and sons over eleven years after they were taken into captivity. Women who see beyond the horizon of torn tents, women whose heart vision takes them into Syria. Women who refuse to be comforted. Women who hope.
I had just read something written by the former Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks (OBM) that resonated with me, so sitting with these beautiful ladies around stinking kerosene heaters, eating their most dainty and delicious date cookies, connected all the dots that were in my mind.
In an article that he wrote, he referred to Jacob who refused to be comforted over the loss of his son, and eventually was proved right when Joseph was discovered in Egypt.
He then quoted from Jeremiah 31, “This is what the Lord “Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears for your work will be rewarded. They will return from the land of the enemy. So there is hope for your future” declares the Lord.”
I quote Sacks, “…the people refused to be comforted because they never gave up hope. All the evidence may suggest otherwise, it may signify irretrievable loss, a decree of history that can not be overturned, a fate that must be accepted.
They never believed the evidence because they had something else to set against it, a faith, a hope, a trust that proved stronger than historical inevitability. Survival was sustained in that hope.
And so - while we live in a world still scarred by violence, poverty and injustice - must we.”
As do our Shariya Camp queens who walk from tent to tent every day asking if someone has seen or heard something of their loved ones. Hope will one day triumph. Hope will overturn a decree of death.
I received a phone call last night. It was from one of our former staff members who had returned to Shingal to take care of the sole survivors of his family, his grandparents. I will never forget the day when he told me that he had legally declared the immediate members of his family dead, ten of them. Dead. It was a painful day. He needed to do that in order to legally inherit land and a bombed out house. He both mourned, was a realist and yet an optimist always pushing into the future, hope sustaining him. He girded himself with hope every day. He rose above the evidence.
His call last night was one of restoration. One of hope for the future. He is getting married at the end of the month. His faith is greater than the evidence presented to him, the lack of information, the suggestions and intimations. His faith and his trust have led him to his wife. Maybe his family will not return to the land, but his hope is strong enough to build for the generations to come.
When I sit with our queens, when I talk with one of our sons on the phone I am ashamed of myself. I am silenced. I am challenged about the heights and depths of my hope. Would I refuse to be comforted because my faith has only room for hope?
Would I?
We would like to take this opportunity to wish all of you who celebrate a Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas. Thank you for walking with us this year, we appreciate your care and the support that you show us.
Can you help?
With your help, we are caring for these beautiful women and others too. We are sitting with them in hope.
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