Some of you may like my latest essay at Image, about the 21 young men murdered by ISIS in Libya. Here’s an excerpt:
These stories are now fantasy to us, or nearly so. Abraham holds the knife to Isaac’s throat, Jacob wrestles a holy messenger, David fells Goliath—the action rises and falls in an old familiar tale of sin and blood and redemption, of endless genealogies, of a recalcitrant flock, of a bitter vine, and we grafted onto that vine thanks to Jesus, sweet Jesus, Jesus teaching, healing, then climbing his cross, and after that dread day, the empty tomb and the upper-room church, then the letters from Paul and a few others, then something about the end times, hallelujah, and now a Bible in every house and praise choruses on our tongues, and after these our Sunday dinners and perhaps the shake of our heads at the bad news coming from those ancient territories, those darkened world’s corners so very far from the God-blessed U.S.A.
God’s people traveled into Egypt for food, even as their remnant now travels from it seeking work, as thirteen young men traveled from their Nile village of El-Aour, along with eight from other locales, these twenty-one joining scores that departed villages and towns, hoping to feed their families just as Joseph’s brothers once did. They were sojourners there.
And we are here. Sometimes we forget here isn’t home, just as we forget the people sojourning there are our brothers and sisters. They shuffle the same windswept and sandy roads our adoptive forefathers traveled, darkening the sand with their blood, with their tears and with blood.
You can read the rest here.
