Faith on the Ground: One Family's Fight for their Land

Sometimes “faith” seems like just a word that we hear a lot of in religious communities. It becomes a reality when we have to struggle with it. Just a few days ago I saw faith at work in a more substantial way in a Christian Arab family that is fighting to hold on to their land. The Nassar family owns a tract of land near Bethlehem which the Israeli government is trying to confiscate to build settlements. Daher Nassar purchased this tract of land in 1916 when the region was under the Ottoman Empire. He did something quite unusual and considered not very wise at the time. He obtained a written title to the land; which meant he had to pay taxes on it. This has proved to be the family’s chief weapon in their court battles to hold on to the land.

The first thing one sees upon entering the compound is a sign that says “We refuse to be enemies.” No matter what happens they will not give themselves over to bitterness. We had a demonstration of this attitude the day we visited the place. Two days before we arrived they had received a demolition order from the Israeli government. In three days if nothing was done bulldozers would arrive to level everything. Three days!? That’s all they had to find their lawyer and then for him to do something about it!? The only real answer is to engage the situation as it comes and look for God in it.

This is not the sort of situation that we like to live in. We want guarantees. Because we spend a lot our time with our head in the future trying to secure it we miss the God of the present moment. To chew on the imaginations of a future dependent on our own self-determination can rapidly plunge one into hopelessness. In a land much in need of faith this hopelessness has caused many Palestinian Christians to move someplace else. For the Nassars, leaving is not an option. They constantly face challenges from a government that wants to get rid of them. So they trustingly walk through every situation as it comes. In this most recent crises God came through and froze the demolition order in court.

Faith is the opposite of what we often think solves problems. It is not to get going when the going gets tough. It is standing still. One finds a place of peace in standing in trust. Turmoil comes from what might be, not from what is. God’s peace is in the present moment. This was what got the Isrealites out of a jam at the Red Sea. As Moses told them, “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be still (Ex 14:14-15).”  Standing still requires courage. It does not, however, mean being inert. Just as the Israelites had to walk through on dry ground when God opened the Red Sea so the Nassar family walks through the openings that God makes in their situation. 

Will they eventually lose their land? For them that is not the question. They look only to what is on the slate for today. God has not resolved their situation. Faith is to find God in the situation not to prove God by its outcome. God, however, has done the unexpected. He has made this family an example of standing in faith which has international influence. The Tent of Nations is the organization that has grown out of their struggle. It is host to 5000 volunteers per year which come to work on the land and to learn and grow from what God is doing in this family.