Christian Family in Damascus Often Runs for Their Lives After Bombings, but Places Trust in God's Hands
Hanna (not her real name) is a Christian woman living in Damascus, Syria, with her husband. She and her husband have two young daughters. Hanna works in a school. Hanna has been writing what life is like in war-torn Syria for over a year.
I'm in church while I'm telling you this. In the room next to me, there is a service going on for refugees. We have two meetings a day now, because prayer is the only thing that we can still do. Every morning when I wake up, I'm relieved because the shootings and the strange voices I heard when I went to sleep are over. Our neighborhood will not be in the hands of the terrorists today. But that doesn't mean we're safe. Regularly when we walk the streets we see bombs coming down, or cars exploding. Then people tell us – run from this place, a bomb has just come down, it will explode soon. So then we run for our lives.
More and more the bombs seem to be aimed at churches. The roof of the school of our church was also hit. Fortunately, the children were in the church at that time and thanks to God nobody got hurt. It's difficult to explain to the children what happened. While we could restore the roof quite soon, of course, they were afraid to return to that place. We try to explain to them that God is in control, no matter what. He is always there, although the devil wants us to believe a different story. I notice that it really helps the children to pray, also my two daughters. It helps them to keep calm and sleep well. God is in their hearts and gives them peace.
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Recently I was at a youth meeting of our church where we spoke about forgiveness; quite a challenging topic in our situation as you might understand. But God asks us to forgive our enemies, no matter what. Jesus' words about forgiveness really touched the heart of a 12-year-old girl that attended the meeting. She stood up in tears and asked if she could share something. Still crying, she told about her 18-year-old brother, who had been beheaded because he was a Christian. We all knew this boy. The sister was so angry at his murderers. But now, she told us, she realized for the first time that she had to forgive them, like Jesus has forgiven us. All in the room were deeply impressed by the story of this girl. We had a deep realization of what forgiving means.
God bless all of you who are praying for us. Please continue praying. The thought that so many of you are praying for us gives us strength.
Open Doors partners with churches and Christian organizations inside Syria to offer relief kits, shelter, trauma counseling and delivery of biblical materials to those in need. One third of the population of Syria are refugees.
