Palestine Pray Quotes

I’m the Saint praying on a balcony - like peaceful beasts grazing along the Sea of Palestine. I’m the scholar in a plain reading chair. Branches and rain beat the library windows. I’m the pedestrian on the high road through the stunted woods; the sound of floodgates drowns out my footsteps. I stare at the melancholy wash of another golden sunset... The path is harsh. The hillocks are weed. The air is still. How far we are from birds and streams. The end of the world must be just ahead.

Albert Graeme It was an English ladye bright, (The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall) And she would marry a Scottish knight, For Love will still be lord of all. Blithely they saw the rising sun When he shone fair on Carlisle wall; But they were sad ere day was done, Though Love was still the lord of all. Her sire gave brooch and jewel fine, Where the sun shines fair on Carlisle wall; Her brother gave but a flask of wine, For ire that Love was lord of all. For she had lands both meadow and lea, Where the sun shines fair on Carlisle wall, For he swore her death, ere he would see A Scottish knight the lord of all. That wine she had not tasted well (The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall) When dead, in her true love's arms, she fell, For Love was still the lord of all! He pierced her brother to the heart, Where the sun shines fair on Carlisle wall, So perish all would true love part That Love may still be lord of all! And then he took the cross divine, Where the sun shines fair on Carlisle wall, And died for her sake in Palestine; So Love was still the lord of all. Now all ye lovers, that faithful prove, (The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall) Pray for their souls who died for love, For Love shall still be lord of all! -- Canto 6

For the first time in his life, Midhat wished he were more religious. Of course he prayed, but though that was a private mechanism it sometimes felt like a public act, and the lessons of the Quran were lessons by rote, one was steeped in them, hearing them so often. They were the texture of his world, and yet they did not occupy that central, vital part of his mind, the part that was vibrating at this moment, on this train, rattling forward while he struggled to hold all these pieces. As a child he had felt some of the same curiosity he held for the mysteries of other creeds—for Christianity with its holy fire, the Samaritans with their alphabets—but that feeling had dulled while he was still young, when traditional religion began to seem a worldly thing, a realm of morals and laws and the same old stories and holidays. They were acts, not thoughts. He faced the water now along the coast, steadying his gaze on the slow distance, beyond the blur of trees pushing past the tracks, on the desolate fishing boats hobbling over the waves. He sensed himself tracing the lip of something very large, something black and well-like, a vessel which was at the same time an emptiness, and he thought, without thinking precisely, only feeling with the tender edges of his mind, what the Revelation might have been for in its origin. Why it was so important that they could argue to the sword what it meant if God had hands, and whether He had made the universe. Underneath it all was a living urgency, that original issue of magnitude; the way several hundred miles on foot could be nothing to the mind, Nablus to Cairo, one thought of a day’s journey by train, but placed vertically that same distance in depth exposed the body’s smallness and suddenly one thought of dying. Did one need to face the earth, nose to soil, to feel that distance towering above? There was something of his own mortality in this. Oh then but why, in a moment of someone else’s death, must he think of his own disappearance?

The altars that the patriarchs left behind at forsaken campsites must have seemed strange to the inhabitants of the land when they came across them. They were so simple and crude, always made from dirt or unshapen stones of the field. On the top could be found the charred remains of an animal. The heathen were never able to carry away from those abandoned campsites any religious ornamentation or figurine of Israel’s God that the people of Abraham may have misplaced or lost. How strange it must have seemed to the people of the land that these nomads spoke out into the thin air when they prayed. How easy it is to imagine them saying, “I want something that I can look at when I pray. I want something I can hold in my hand!” What wonder, awe, and fear the strange worship of Israel invoked upon all of Palestine when for forty years they slowly moved around in a barren land where ordinarily no one could survive. It seems that God has always allowed impossible settings for His people. Our Lord has never apologized for expecting His people to do the hard things. God has always seemed inclined to choose the weak things over the strong, the lowly and despised things, the things that are not, that He may bring to nought the things that are.

was asked, ‘Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?’ I replied, ‘No.’ . . . The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They were dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world. . . . Only a branch shall survive. . . . They had to accept it . . . If they feel and suffer they will find the way—beachareth hajamin—in the fullness of time . . . I pray that we may preserve our national unity, for it is all we have.

Let's pray with me for the freedom of the Muslims of Kashmir and Palestine and peace, security, and brotherhood of Pakistan and the Muslim world. We Muslims should show the world that we are Peace, not Violence.

Then I read this: “You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45). That's it! I was thunderstruck. Never before had I heard anything like this. But I knew that this was the message I had been searching for all my life. For years I had struggled to know who my enemy was, and I had looked for my enemies outside of Islam and Palestine, but I suddenly realized that the Israelis were not my enemies. Neither was Hamas, nor my Uncle Ibrahim, nor the kid who beat me… nor the ape like guards... I saw that enemies were not defined by nationality, religion, or color. I understood that we all share the same common enemies. Greed, pride, and all of the bad ideas and the darkness of the devil that live inside us. That meant I could love anyone.

How Good Deeds Conquered an Empire Humanly speaking, no one would have thought it possible to bring the nations to the worship of God through simple good deeds. How on earth could “good deeds” change a realm as mighty as the Roman Empire, let alone the whole world? As unlikely as it may have sounded at the time, Jesus’ call to be the light of the world was taken seriously by his disciples. They devoted themselves to quite heroic acts of godliness. They loved their enemies, prayed for their persecutors and cared for the poor wherever they found them. We know that the Jerusalem church set up a large daily food roster for the destitute among them—no fewer than seven Christian leaders were assigned to the management of the program (Acts 6:1—7). The apostle Paul, perhaps the greatest missionary/evangelist ever, was utterly devoted to these kinds of good deeds. In response to a famine that ravaged Palestine between AD 46—48 Paul conducted his own decade-long international aid program earmarked for poverty-stricken Palestinians. Wherever he went, he asked the Gentile churches to contribute whatever they could to the poor in Jerusalem.23 Christian “good deeds” continued long after the New Testament era. We know, for instance, that by AD 250 the Christian community in Rome was supporting 1,500 destitute people every day.24 All around the Mediterranean churches were setting up food programs, hospitals and orphanages. These were available to believers and unbelievers alike. This was an innovation. Historians often point to ancient Israel as the first society to introduce a comprehensive welfare system that cared for the poor and marginalised within the community. Christians

I am a Nakba survivor… When they arrived in Palestine in the 1880s, the Zionists said they were coming to a land without a people, and they continued to make this claim for decades. But look around you at these beautiful homes. This is just one of many Palestinian neighborhoods occupied by Israelis. Many of those homes were built before the Zionists came. They belonged to educated, sophisticated Palestinian families. Before the Nakba, Palestine, particularly Jerusalem, kept its doors open to people of all ethnic groups and creeds who wanted to pray or settle here. We Palestinians are proud to be part of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society. We are here to stay, we, the survivors of the Palestinian Nakba.