Hope in Palestine

I’ve just now finished reading Mitri Raheb and Suzanne Watts Henderson on The Cross in Contexts: Suffering and Redemption in Palestine (New York: Orbis, 2017). The book ended on a nice note:

The situation under occupation is very depressing, not only for Palestinians but for many who care for both Palestine and Israel and the people who inhabit them. Visitors to Bethlehem find themselves dismayed as they see the wall on three sides of the little town and experience the entrenched system of segregation. God seems to be absent from the so-called Holy Land. But then they tour our ministries, they watch Palestinian kids dancing with joy in their eyes, Christian and Muslims girls playing soccer with pride in their face, students at our university producing films that tell the human side of our story, and elderly people writing books sharing their lifelong experiences with the younger generations. They too discover God in unexpected places. Palestine was the unexpected place for God to reveal himself. The ultimate revelation on the cross shows that there is no place on earth, in history, in one’s own life, where God cannot reveal himself. He is there where no one expects him, there even when we do not count on him, there when hope seems lost forever. The good news proclaimed on the cross was and is this: Expect God in the most unexpected places.